evolvability

Draghi JA, Parsons TL, Wagner GP & Plotkin JB 2010 Mutational robustness can facilitate adaptation. Nature 463:353-355.

• the population size and mutation rate in part determine whether robustness increases or decreases adaptation time
• this insight was not apparent from informal arguments linking robustness and evolvability
• the parameters K, P, and f provide a new way to quantify epistasis beyond the conventional framework of synergistic and antagonistic interactions among selected sites
• even though most standing genetic variation is neutral, the epistatic consequences of neutral mutations have received little experimental study
• conditionally neutral mutations strongly influence a population's capacity to adapt
• this form of 'neutral epistasis' therefore deserves direct experimental interrogation