I agree with your framing... We have an example of this in a wild plant species for a strong-effect phytochemistry QTL: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Granted it's just 1 locus but maybe a useful proof of concept. Were the reviewers arguing balancing sel = heterozygote advantage?
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Looking for a creative scientist to join us at USC to investigate recessive variation and complex traits in model or non-model species. The project is funded by a multi-year NIH grant, contract can be renewed.
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usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...
Very curious whether people here agree with this framing! n/n
Adaptation to specific locations or environments that utilizes these balanced alleles can then be both the cause and the consequence of balancing selection in a species. 6/n
There are many possible such stabilizing forces such as temporally, spatially, and ecologically varying selection where balancing effect can be further strengthened with, for instance, storage effects, and beneficial reversal of dominance/segregation lift. 5/n
In our mind a polymorphism is balanced in a species if it is 1) not neutral & 2) there is a force that slows down fixation and allows it to persist much longer than what is implied by how rapidly it can change frequency when common. In this way they don't need to be older than neutral alleles. 4/n
A species will be polymorphic if it contains a variety of genotypes each of which is superior in adaptive value to the others in some habitats which occur regularly in the territory occupied by this species" 3/n
@jccvila.bsky.social just found a perfect quote by Dobzhansky in Genetics and the Origin of Species that perfectly encapsulates our point of view: "Balanced polymorphism, based on adaptive superiorities of heterozygotes, is not the only possible kind of adaptive polymorphism. 2/n
We are revising this ms www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... and responding to reviewers who liked the paper but had issues with how we thought of balancing selection and its relationship to ecological, local adaptation 1/n
Our PhD student Kennedy Orwa, who studies applications of AI to health care, was hastily deported today to Kenya along with his 13-year-old son without opportunity to speak to legal counsel.
King 5 reports that he held a valid visa that was rescinded without explanation.
The two papers: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
and
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
We’ve been talking in our lab meetings about sexual conflict and sexual dimorphism, and have some thoughts. What if animal genomes are far more sex-specific and less cosntrained than we assume? @linley-sherin.bsky.social pulled it all together here www.zoology.ubc.ca/mank-lab/pdf... 1/n
Big thanks to Klas Udekwu and Chris Marx for writing a really nice primer to this paper too! 3/3 journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
I like the emerging notion that fitness depends on the "limiting" functions with the rest being "in excess" similar to the way nutrients can be limiting or present in excess. This would mean that mapping of genotype to fitness should generally be low dimensional & strongly environment-dependent. 2/3
Very excited about this paper. Olivia did such a beautiful job and in particular tackled an analytically very hard question of whether different environments are limited by the same of distinct functions. Very curious what people think! 1/2
Gonna be some rad science -- @mollyschumer.bsky.social keynote and a bunch of good talks and posters. And I'll personally pay the registration of anyone who wants to come (it's free).
Jeff is way too generous. He and I will split it!
Coming up soon! Check out the excellent line up of talks! @jrossibarra.bsky.social bapg-conference.github.io
Some work from our lab by @grantkinsler.bsky.social , @kgslab.bsky.social and @petrovadmitri.bsky.social pioneered a new way to investigate these genotype-phenotype-fitness maps in microbes, using a top-down approach elifesciences.org/articles/61271. (4/n)
Really excited that this major work from my PhD is finally published in @plosbiology.org ! In it, we were trying to tackle a fundamental question in evolution - how do genetic mutations map onto evolutionary fitness? (1/n)
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...
Really neat piece of work in @plosbiology.org, inferring the hidden layer of "fitnotypes" that link genotypes to fitness, and finding surprisingly low dimensionality. From @oliviamghosh.bsky.social @grantkinsler.bsky.social @benjaminhgood.bsky.social & @petrovadmitri.bsky.social
Happy to share the final version of @oliviamghosh.bsky.social's paper on inferring low dimensional phenotype-fitness maps from high-throughput fitness measurements across environments. Fun collaboration with @oliviamghosh.bsky.social, @grantkinsler.bsky.social, & @petrovadmitri.bsky.social
Two models for the nature of pleiotropy in adaptation. Left: Schematic of the environmental structure in this study. Environments can be mapped onto a multidimensional environment space characterized by chemical and physical compositions. The large green circle represents an environment where adaptive mutants evolved, and the large pink circle is a distant environment. Around each base, a set of identical environmental perturbations (arrows) is applied, generating clusters of similar environments around distinct base environments. Top right: Schematic of fitnotype map for adaptive mutants near their home base environment. By measuring fitness in each of the green environments, one can infer how many fitnotypes matter for this set of mutants in their home environment. Here, only four of the possible 8 fitnotypes matter. Bottom right: When the mutants are moved to the distant base environment, and their fitness is measured in all pink environments (base and perturbations), there are two possibilities. Either more fitnotypes become important and the space appears higher-dimensional (left, pleiotropic expansion), or the set of fitnotypes that matters remains low-dimensional, but shifts (right, pleiotropic shift).
Predicting the effect of a #mutation on #fitness is hard. @oliviamghosh.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social &co use fitness effects of adaptive yeast mutants to show that underlying genotype-phenotype-fitness maps are low-dimensional but context-dependent @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4dLy2Ez
Two models for the nature of pleiotropy in adaptation. Left: Schematic of the environmental structure in this study. Environments can be mapped onto a multidimensional environment space characterized by chemical and physical compositions. The large green circle represents an environment where adaptive mutants evolved, and the large pink circle is a distant environment. Around each base, a set of identical environmental perturbations (arrows) is applied, generating clusters of similar environments around distinct base environments. Top right: Schematic of fitnotype map for adaptive mutants near their home base environment. By measuring fitness in each of the green environments, one can infer how many fitnotypes matter for this set of mutants in their home environment. Here, only four of the possible 8 fitnotypes matter. Bottom right: When the mutants are moved to the distant base environment, and their fitness is measured in all pink environments (base and perturbations), there are two possibilities. Either more fitnotypes become important and the space appears higher-dimensional (left, pleiotropic expansion), or the set of fitnotypes that matters remains low-dimensional, but shifts (right, pleiotropic shift).
Predicting the effect of a #mutation on #fitness is hard. @oliviamghosh.bsky.social @petrovadmitri.bsky.social &co use fitness effects of adaptive yeast mutants to show that underlying genotype-phenotype-fitness maps are low-dimensional but context-dependent @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4dLy2Ez
I think this is our lab's first paper in a proper ecology journal. We are now card carrying ecologists!
Really excited to see this work out now in Ecology Letters!
May be particularly interesting to those thinking about life-history trade-offs and eco-evolutionary feedbacks, and how those may interact to maintain variation within natural populations.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
I certainly agree - I am pondering whether what makes these such clear innovations?
I am not asking about people doing novel work! I am asking about what counts as evolution producing novelty!
All I am saying is that you seem to know what new in "new morphospace" is but claim that "novel" by comparison is just fluff. I don't understand the distinction. Both new and novel seem equally clear or obscure.