mutational robustness

Rajon E & Masel J 2011 Evolution of molecular error rates and the consequences for evolvability. PNAS 108:1082-1087.

• there are two ways to handle the dangers posed by errors
• one is to avoid making errors
• this is normally a global solution
• the other is to make more errors, but evolve robustness to the effects of each of them
• this is a local solution that needs to evolve separately at each affected locus
• selection for local solutions is weaker and is therefore expected only in large populations
• a similar prediction was previously made in studies of the evolution of redundancy (8) and of chaperone proteins (8–10)
• we also find that the evolutionary dynamics are bistable