SOURCE-LINKED INTELLIGENCE

Fitness seascapes and the role of weak selection in adaptive evolution

CORDIS · observation · Publication date unknown

high fitness regions. My team and I will use cutting-edge experimental technology that combines high-throughput CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing, in vivo fitness (growth rate) measurements in E. coli, and deep learning to map fitness landscapes of up to a hundred trillion (1014) genotypes, for five very different study systems that include proteins and regulatory DNA regions. We will map each landscape in two or more abiotic environments that include different carbon sources, antibiotics, and other stressors. We will join these maps with population genetic models to test three core hypotheses. First, changing environments can allow populations to discover high fitness regions even in rugged landscapes. Second, weakly selected mutations can lead to high fitness regions in such landscapes. Third, environmental change and weakly selected mutations synergize to enhance adaptive evolution. SEASCAPES will transform fitness landscape research, and resonate in fields as different as medicine and protein engineering. molecular evolution, fitness landscape, eco-evolutionary dynamics, genome editing

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recordType

award

status

SIGNED

region

EU

value

2491985

unit

EUR