Year: 2022

PLEIOTROPY AND DISEASE. "This variability has implications for human disease since it can affect microbial drug resistance and pathogenicity. Moreover, these same concepts are relevant to cancer." https://lnkd.in/dmHThkS View in LinkedIn

PHENOTYPIC MEANS. "Since the phenotypic potential associated with a genotype summarizes variability across many independent phenotypes, we hypothesized that this measure might be related to pleiotropy. In other words, mutations that increase variation in multiple phenotypes may also alter multiple phenotypic means. As a measure of pleiotropy, we simply counted the number of phenotype means that differed from the wild‐type reference." https://lnkd.in/dmHThkS View in LinkedIn

GENERAL PROPERTY. "Our results lend support to the idea that phenotypic robustness of cellular morphology is a general property of a genotype rather than trait specific. A given strain's variability in nearly any morphological phenotype was correlated with its variability in most other phenotypes." https://lnkd.in/dmHThkS View in LinkedIn

VARIATION QUESTION. "The study of natural genetic variation also raises important questions about the relationship between nongenetic and genetic sources of phenotypic variation. For example, is a genetic background that is prone to greater variation among isogenic cells also prone to greater average effects of new mutations?" https://lnkd.in/dmHThkS View in LinkedIn

NEGATIVE ANSWER. "It is fair to say that the consensus prediction for many years has been that the answer to this particular question would be yes. Only recently has the prediction been directly tested and, in that case, the answer was no." https://lnkd.in/dmHThkS View in LinkedIn

DRIVERS OF ADAPTATION. "Whether they are mechanistically connected or not, modulators of the levels of nongenetic variation and of genetic variation are potentially major drivers of adaptation. As stated above, increased nongenetic variation could constitute a bet‐hedging mechanism. Seen in a slightly different way, it could enable a kind of phenotypic exploration that permits initial survival under extremely challenging conditions, prior to genetic change." https://lnkd.in/dmHThkS View in LinkedIn

GENETIC CAPACITANCE. "For genetic variation, a phenomenon known as capacitance could accelerate evolutionary change. A capacitor modulates the effects of genetic variation so that it accumulates neutrally then is revealed at potentially opportune times." https://lnkd.in/dmHThkS View in LinkedIn

GENE STABILIZERS. "Our findings indicate that a large number of nonessential genes and essential genes (this study) can function as phenotypic stabilizers. These results suggest that the mutational target for modulation of phenotypic stability is large." https://lnkd.in/dmHThkS View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this contemplation of non-gene regulation of individual variation, and how it can act as a modulator of reserved variation that enables survival in new and challenging environments. To arrive at this thinking, population studies based in averaged means that covers subtle variations needed to be abandoned and new thinking employed. View in LinkedIn

SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." (CD). https://lnkd.in/eykUy37 View in LinkedIn