Interaction-based evolution: how natural selection and nonrandom mutation work together
Adi Livnat
Correspondence: Adi Livnat adi@vt.edu
Author Affiliations
Department of Biological Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24061, USA
Biology Direct 2013, 8:24 doi:10.1186/1745-6150-8-24
Received: 25 April 2013
Accepted: 26 September 2013
Published: 18 October 2013
© 2013 Livnat; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
The modern evolutionary synthesis leaves unresolved some of the most fundamental, long-standing questions in evolutionary biology: What is the role of sex in evolution? How does complex adaptation evolve? How can selection operate effectively on genetic interactions? More recently, the molecular biology and genomics revolutions have raised a host of critical new questions, through empirical findings that the modern synthesis fails to explain: for example, the discovery of de novo genes; the immense constructive role of transposable elements in evolution; genetic variance and biochemical activity that go far beyond what traditional natural selection can maintain; perplexing cases of molecular parallelism; and more.
Presentation of the hypothesis
Here I address these questions from a unified perspective, by means of a new mechanistic view of evolution that offers a novel connection between selection on the phenotype and genetic evolutionary change (while relying, like the traditional theory, on natural selection as the only source of feedback on the fit between an organism and its environment). I hypothesize that the mutation that is of relevance for the evolution of complex adaptation—while not Lamarckian, or “directed” to increase fitness—is not random, but is instead the outcome of a complex and continually evolving biological process that combines information from multiple loci into one. This allows selection on a fleeting combination of interacting alleles at different loci to have a hereditary effect according to the combination’s fitness.
Testing and implications of the hypothesis
This proposed mechanism addresses the problem of how beneficial genetic interactions can evolve under selection, and also offers an intuitive explanation for the role of sex in evolution, which focuses on sex as the generator of genetic combinations. Importantly, it also implies that genetic variation that has appeared neutral through the lens of traditional theory can actually experience selection on interactions and thus has a much greater adaptive potential than previously considered. Empirical evidence for the proposed mechanism from both molecular evolution and evolution at the organismal level is discussed, and multiple predictions are offered by which it may be tested.
Reviewers
This article was reviewed by Nigel Goldenfeld (nominated by Eugene V. Koonin), Jürgen Brosius and W. Ford Doolittle.
Keywords: Adaptive evolution; Neutral theory; Sex and recombination; Epistasis; Junk DNA; de novo genes; Transcriptional promiscuity; Mutation bias; Evolvability
FREE PDF GRATIS: Biology Direct
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NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:
Como é bom ser vindicado por evolucionistas honestos: a Síntese Evolutiva Moderna é uma teoria científica morta que teima ser ortodoxia somente nos livros-texto de Biologia do ensino médio e superior. E os darwinistas fundamentalistas xiitas negam de pés juntos que não existe crise na teoria da evolução de Darwin. Nada mais falso. Desonestidade acadêmica. 171 epistêmico!!! Ninguém vai me processar por danos morais e materiais???
NOTA DESTE BLOGGER:
Como é bom ser vindicado por evolucionistas honestos: a Síntese Evolutiva Moderna é uma teoria científica morta que teima ser ortodoxia somente nos livros-texto de Biologia do ensino médio e superior. E os darwinistas fundamentalistas xiitas negam de pés juntos que não existe crise na teoria da evolução de Darwin. Nada mais falso. Desonestidade acadêmica. 171 epistêmico!!! Ninguém vai me processar por danos morais e materiais???
A agora, Nomenklatura científica e Galera de meninos e meninas de Darwin - a teoria da evolução através da seleção natural e n mecanismos (de A a Z, vai que um falhe...) é uma teoria científica falida que já deveria ter sido jogada na lata de lixo da História da Ciência.
Fui, cada vez mais convencido de que a teoria da evolução de Darwin foi o maior erro na História da Ciência para explicar a origem e evolução das espécies em suas diversidades e complexidades.
