Project
Identifying genes and molecular mechanisms contributing to mutational robustness in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Organisms require mutations to evolve, but only a fraction of mutations is potentially beneficial. Therefore, organisms need to protect themselves from the deleterious effects of mutations. Some biological mechanisms can prevent the occurrence of mutations, but they also restrict an organism’s ability to evolve. Recent studies have shown that the effect of deleterious mutations can be hidden under normal circumstances. However, major perturbations such as stress or environmental changes can reveal previously hidden mutations. This observation has led scientists to hypothesize the existence of “mutational robustness”: that organisms evolved mechanisms to suppress the phenotypic effect of mutations. Such systems will have major consequences as they may for example strongly affect the suppression or severity of genetic diseases. This could, in theory, also potentiate evolution as it allows for the accumulation of mutations until conditions arise in which the mutations might be favorable. Mutational robustness is a highly-debated topic as current evidence only indirectly supports its existence. However, we now identified several strong candidate molecular mechanisms. Here, we propose to directly investigate whether and how they affect robustness and therefore answer the question whether organisms harbour mutational robustness mechanisms. The results will improve our understanding of basic genetics and evolutionary biology, and have larger implications in disease studies.