Epistasis and the Emergence of Evolutionary Capacitance

SwatiPatel

Oregon State University

"Epistasis and the Emergence of Evolutionary Capacitance"

In the 90s, several experiments suggested a hypothesis that certain genes function to mask or buffer the effects of mutations, thereby allowing them to accumulate and be stored. These were termed evolutionary capacitors and addressed the fundamental evolutionary problem of how populations optimize fitness in one environment while maintaining variation to adapt to another. However, more recent experiments support an alternative hypothesis that such buffering of mutations is a natural and unsurprising outcome of epistasis and the mutation-selection process. To quantitatively test this hypothesis, we develop a mathematical framework that extends a classical partial differential equation of the mutation-selection process to account for epistasis. Using a perturbation method on steady state solutions, we show that certain types of epistatic interactions and selection pressures will lead to the emergence of the evolutionary capacitance phenomena.
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