Robustness & Evolvability in Living Systems

by Wagner, Andreas

• ISBN13: 9780691134048
• ISBN10: 0691134049
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-07-02
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

All living things are remarkably complex, yet their DNA is unstable, undergoing countless random mutations over generations. Despite this instability, most animals do not grow two heads or die, plants continue to thrive, and bacteria continue to divide.Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systemstackles this perplexing paradox. The book explores why genetic changes do not cause organisms to fail catastrophically and how evolution shapes organisms' robustness. Andreas Wagner looks at this problem from the ground up, starting with the alphabet of DNA, the genetic code, RNA, and protein molecules, moving on to genetic networks and embryonic development, and working his way up to whole organisms. He then develops an evolutionary explanation for robustness. Wagner shows how evolution by natural selection preferentially finds and favors robust solutions to the problems organisms face in surviving and reproducing. Such robustness, he argues, also enhances the potential for future evolutionary innovation. Wagner also argues that robustness has less to do with organisms having plenty of spare parts (the redundancy theory that has been popular) and more to do with the reality that mutations can change organisms in ways that do not substantively affect their fitness. Unparalleled in its field, this book offers the most detailed analysis available of all facets of robustness within organisms. It will appeal not only to biologists but also to engineers interested in the design of robust systems and to social scientists concerned with robustness in human communities and populations.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Robustness Below the Gene Level	p. 13
The Genetic Alphabet	p. 15
The Genetic Code	p. 25
RNA Structure	p. 39
Proteins and Point Mutations	p. 62
Proteins and Recombination	p. 78
Robustness Above the Gene Level	p. 91
Regulatory DNA Regions and Their Reorganization in Evolution	p. 93
Metabolic Pathways	p. 104
Metabolic Networks	p. 120
Drosophila Segmentation and Other Gene Regulatory Networks	p. 143
Phenotypic Traits, Cryptic Variation, and Human Diseases	p. 161
The Many Ways of Building the Same Body	p. 175
Common Principles	p. 193
Neutral Spaces	p. 195
Evolvability and Neutral Mutations	p. 217
Redundancy of Parts or Distributed Robustness?	p. 228
Robustness as an Evolved Adaptation to Mutations	p. 247
Robustness as an Evolved Adaptation to Environmental Change and Noise	p. 270
Robustness and Fragility: Advantages to Variation and Trade-offs	p. 281
Robustness Beyond the Organism	p. 295
Robustness in Natural Systems and Self-Organization	p. 297
Robustness in Man-made Systems	p. 310
Epilogue: Seven Open Questions for Systems Biology	p. 321
Bibliography	p. 323
Index	p. 359
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