Stress-directed adaptive mutations and evolution

Stress-directed adaptive mutations and evolution.

Comparative biochemistry demonstrates that the metabolites, complex biochemical networks, enzymes and regulatory mechanisms essential to all living cells are conserved in amazing detail throughout evolution. Thus, in order to evolve, an organism must overcome new adverse conditions without creating different but equally dangerous alterations in its ongoing successful metabolic relationship with...

Putative RNA-directed adaptive mutations in cancer evolution

Understanding the molecular mechanisms behind the capacity of cancer cells to adapt to the tumor microenvironment and to anticancer therapies is a major challenge. In this context, cancer is believed to be an evolutionary process where random mutations and the selection process shape the mutational pattern and phenotype of cancer cells. This article challenges the notion of randomness of some c...

Adaptive Evolution of a Stress Response Protein

BACKGROUND Some cancers are mediated by an interplay between tissue damage, pathogens and localised innate immune responses, but the mechanisms that underlie these linkages are only beginning to be unravelled. METHODS AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Here we identify a strong signature of adaptive evolution on the DNA sequence of the mammalian stress response gene SEP53, a member of the epidermal diffe...

Empirical determinants of adaptive mutations in yeast 1 experimental evolution

Adaptive evolution by mutations in the FLO11 gene.

In nature, Saccharomyces yeasts manifest a number of adaptive responses to overcome adverse environments such as filamentation, invasive growth, flocculation and adherence to solid surfaces. Certain Saccharomyces wild yeasts, namely "flor yeasts," have also acquired the ability to form a buoyant biofilm at the broth surface. Here we report that mutations in a single gene, identified as FLO11, s...