The Ascent of the Abundant: How Mutational Networks Constrain Evolution
Figure 5
Network connectivity correlates with mutation frequency in the 12-mer fitness landscape.
The rates of mutation between phenotype i and phenotype j in simulations is nearly identical to the fraction of nonneutral mutations to i that produce j (fij ). The top pane depicts this correlation for an abundant phenotype (rank 2, 218567 sequences), whereas the bottom pane shows this for a small neutral network (rank 47, 800 sequences). The mean slope of the regression line (taken over all 52 of 59 neutral networks that arose in simulation) was r2 = 0.978 with 95% confidence interval [0.945, 1.011], which is statistically indistinguishable from one.