The Scientist : Can't get there from here [15/8/2000]

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by William Wells

RESEARCH ROUND-UP

Can't get there from here

Two populations of an RNA virus, derived from a single ancestral phage, repeatedly evolve towards different fitness maxima.

Email: William Wells - wells@biotext.com
News from The Scientist 2000, 1(1):20000815-01

Published

15 August 2000

In the 10 August Nature, Burch and Chao find that two populations of an RNA virus, derived from a single ancestral phage, repeatedly evolve towards different fitness maxima (Nature 2000, 406:625-628). The average fitness of one of the final phage populations is actually lower than that of the starting clone, suggesting that the original individual was at the peak of a local maximum of fitness. The existence of these different and non-overlapping solutions to maximizing fitness suggests that the evolvability of an RNA virus is determined by which advantageous genotypes are within its mutational neighborhood.


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