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A Synergism between Adaptive Effects and Evolvability Drives Whole Genome Duplication to Fixation

Figure 1

Virtual Cell simulation protocol.

A schematic overview of the Virtual Cell model shows how resource can diffuse and be transported into the cell, where it is converted to energy molecule and further catabolized into an unspecified end product. The expression of genes coding for different variants (differently evolved parameters for substrate affinities and binding motifs) of enzymes, pumps and TFs are differentially regulated depending on TF regulatory interactions with their promoters. Genes are located on a spatially explicit, circular genome. For our simulation protocol 100 populations consisting of 1024 cells each were randomly initialized and evolved under standard environmental conditions. From populations that reached high fitness (arbitrarily defined as a fitness higher than 0.85) 10 were selected for further environmental change testing. 1000 generations upon reaching high fitness these 10 selected populations were each subjected to 80 novel environmental conditions. From the 800 simulations fit runs were grouped into lineages with WGD and lineages without WGD within their line of descent. A neutral control set was formed by continuing evolution of the initially fit lineages under identical standard environmental conditions.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003547.g001