Naslov
Effect of Host Species on Topography of the Fitness Landscape for a Plant RNA Virus

Autori
Cervera, Héctor ; Lalić, Jasna ; Elena, Santiago F.

Izvornik
Journal of virology (0022-538X) 90 (2016), 22; 10160-10169

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Radovi u časopisima, članak, znanstveni

Ključne riječi
adaptive fitness landscapes ; experimental evolution ; virus evolution

Sažetak
Adaptive fitness landscapes are a fundamental concept in evolutionary biology that relate the genotypes of individuals to their fitness. In the end, the evolutionary fate of evolving populations depends on the topography of the landscape, that is, the numbers of accessible mutational pathways and possible fitness peaks (i.e., adaptive solutions). For a long time, fitness landscapes were only theoretical constructions due to a lack of precise information on the mapping between genotypes and phenotypes. In recent years, however, efforts have been devoted to characterizing the properties of empirical fitness landscapes for individual proteins or for microbes adapting to artificial environments. In a previous study, we characterized the properties of the empirical fitness landscape defined by the first five mutations fixed during adaptation of tobacco etch potyvirus (TEV) to a new experimental host, Arabidopsis thaliana. Here we evaluate the topography of this landscape in the ancestral host Nicotiana tabacum. By comparing the topographies of the landscapes for the two hosts, we found that some features remained similar, such as the existence of fitness holes and the prevalence of epistasis, including cases of sign and reciprocal sign epistasis that created rugged, uncorrelated, and highly random topographies. However, we also observed significant differences in the fine-grained details between the two landscapes due to changes in the fitness and epistatic interactions of some genotypes. Our results support the idea that not only fitness tradeoffs between hosts but also topographical incongruences among fitness landscapes in alternative hosts may contribute to virus specialization.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Biologija

POVEZANOST RADA