Evolution of Mutational Robustness in an RNA Virus

Mutational (genetic) robustness is phenotypic constancy in the face of mutational changes to the genome. Robustness is critical to the understanding of evolution because phenotypically expressed genetic variation is the fuel of natural selection. Nonetheless, the evidence for adaptive evolution of m...

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Main Authors:	Montville, Rebecca, Froissart, Remy, Remold, Susanna K, Tenaillon, Olivier, Turner, Paul E
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2005
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1275523/

id	pubmed-1275523
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-12755232005-11-01 Evolution of Mutational Robustness in an RNA Virus Montville, Rebecca Froissart, Remy Remold, Susanna K Tenaillon, Olivier Turner, Paul E Research Article Mutational (genetic) robustness is phenotypic constancy in the face of mutational changes to the genome. Robustness is critical to the understanding of evolution because phenotypically expressed genetic variation is the fuel of natural selection. Nonetheless, the evidence for adaptive evolution of mutational robustness in biological populations is controversial. Robustness should be selectively favored when mutation rates are high, a common feature of RNA viruses. However, selection for robustness may be relaxed under virus co-infection because complementation between virus genotypes can buffer mutational effects. We therefore hypothesized that selection for genetic robustness in viruses will be weakened with increasing frequency of co-infection. To test this idea, we used populations of RNA phage φ6 that were experimentally evolved at low and high levels of co-infection and subjected lineages of these viruses to mutation accumulation through population bottlenecking. The data demonstrate that viruses evolved under high co-infection show relatively greater mean magnitude and variance in the fitness changes generated by addition of random mutations, confirming our hypothesis that they experience weakened selection for robustness. Our study further suggests that co-infection of host cells may be advantageous to RNA viruses only in the short term. In addition, we observed higher mutation frequencies in the more robust viruses, indicating that evolution of robustness might foster less-accurate genome replication in RNA viruses. Public Library of Science 2005-11 2005-11-01 /pmc/articles/PMC1275523/ /pubmed/16248678 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0030381 Text en Copyright: © 2005 Montville et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Montville, Rebecca Froissart, Remy Remold, Susanna K Tenaillon, Olivier Turner, Paul E
spellingShingle	Montville, Rebecca Froissart, Remy Remold, Susanna K Tenaillon, Olivier Turner, Paul E Evolution of Mutational Robustness in an RNA Virus
author_facet	Montville, Rebecca Froissart, Remy Remold, Susanna K Tenaillon, Olivier Turner, Paul E
author_sort	Montville, Rebecca
title	Evolution of Mutational Robustness in an RNA Virus
title_short	Evolution of Mutational Robustness in an RNA Virus
title_full	Evolution of Mutational Robustness in an RNA Virus
title_fullStr	Evolution of Mutational Robustness in an RNA Virus
title_full_unstemmed	Evolution of Mutational Robustness in an RNA Virus
title_sort	evolution of mutational robustness in an rna virus
description	Mutational (genetic) robustness is phenotypic constancy in the face of mutational changes to the genome. Robustness is critical to the understanding of evolution because phenotypically expressed genetic variation is the fuel of natural selection. Nonetheless, the evidence for adaptive evolution of mutational robustness in biological populations is controversial. Robustness should be selectively favored when mutation rates are high, a common feature of RNA viruses. However, selection for robustness may be relaxed under virus co-infection because complementation between virus genotypes can buffer mutational effects. We therefore hypothesized that selection for genetic robustness in viruses will be weakened with increasing frequency of co-infection. To test this idea, we used populations of RNA phage φ6 that were experimentally evolved at low and high levels of co-infection and subjected lineages of these viruses to mutation accumulation through population bottlenecking. The data demonstrate that viruses evolved under high co-infection show relatively greater mean magnitude and variance in the fitness changes generated by addition of random mutations, confirming our hypothesis that they experience weakened selection for robustness. Our study further suggests that co-infection of host cells may be advantageous to RNA viruses only in the short term. In addition, we observed higher mutation frequencies in the more robust viruses, indicating that evolution of robustness might foster less-accurate genome replication in RNA viruses.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2005
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1275523/
_version_	1611379023504474112

Evolution of Mutational Robustness in an RNA Virus

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