bias and evolution of the mutationally accessible phenotypic space in a developmental system偏见和演化突变表型访问空间的发展系统.pdfVIP

Bias and Evolution of the Mutationally Accessible Phenotypic Space in a Developmental System 1 ¤ 2 ´ 1 Christian Braendle * , Charles F. Baer , Marie-Anne Felix ´ 1 Institut Jacques Monod, CNRS–Universite Paris Diderot, Paris, France, 2 Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of America Abstract Genetic and developmental architecture may bias the mutationally available phenotypic spectrum. Although such asymmetries in the introduction of variation may influence possible evolutionary trajectories, we lack quantitative characterization of biases in mutationally inducible phenotypic variation, their genotype-dependence, and their underlying molecular and developmental causes. Here we quantify the mutationally accessible phenotypic spectrum of the vulval developmental system using mutation accumulation (MA) lines derived from four wild isolates of the nematodes Caenorhabditis elegans and C. briggsae. The results confirm that on average, spontaneous mutations degrade developmental precision, with MA lines showing a low, yet consistently increased, proportion of developmental defects and variants. This result indicates strong purifying selection acting to maintain an invariant vulval phenotype. Both developmental system and genotype significantly bias the spectrum of mutationally inducible phenotypic variants. First, irrespective of genotype, there is a developmental bias, such that certain phenotypic variants are commonly induced by MA, while others are very rarely or never induced. Second,