Mutation pressure, drift, and the pace of molecular coevolution
Abstract
A wide variety of features at the cellular level involve precise interactions between participating molecular partners, thereby requiring coordinated coevolutionary changes within lineages. The same is true for ecological interactions between species. Although there has been much speculation on how such constraints might drive molecular evolutionary rates beyond the neutral expectation, there has been little formal evolutionary theory to evaluate the generality of such claims. Here, a general framework is developed for ascertaining how rates of sequence evolution depend on the population-genetic environments of both interacting partner molecules. Although the features of one site can indeed drive the evolution of the other, only under restrictive conditions does this process push rates beyond the neutral expectation.
- Publication:
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- July 2023
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.2306741120
- Bibcode:
- 2023PNAS..12006741L