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SUMMARY:The structure of genotype-phenotype maps makes fitness landscapes 
 navigable - Sebastian Ahnert (University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20231208T100000Z
DTEND:20231208T103000Z
UID:TALK208885@talks.cam.ac.uk
DESCRIPTION:with Sam F. Greenbury and Ard A. Louis\nIn the biological lite
 rature fitness landscapes are often described in intuitive terms\, as low-
 dimensional landscapes of the kind encountered in everyday experience with
  &lsquo\;peaks&rsquo\; and &lsquo\;valleys&rsquo\;. Genotype space\, howev
 er\, is extremely high dimensional\, resulting in counter-intuitive struct
 ural properties of genotype-phenotype maps. We present results showing tha
 t these structural properties\, such as the existence of large neutral net
 works\, make fitness landscapes navigable. For three biologically realisti
 c models of genotype-phenotype maps &mdash\; RNA secondary structure\, pro
 tein tertiary structure\, and protein complexes &mdash\; we find that fitn
 ess maxima can be reached from almost any phenotype without passing throug
 h fitness valleys\, even if phenotypes are assigned random fitnesses. This
  in turn indicates that fitness landscapes only contain very few true vall
 eys. We also consider evolutionary simulations between pairs of functional
  RNA sequences and show that paths of monotonically increasing fitness are
  also likely to be used under evolutionary dynamics. Our findings can info
 rm evolutionary predictions as well as directed evolution experiments.\n&n
 bsp\;
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Newton Institute
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