Abstract
Although organisms have diversified remarkably through evolution, they do not exhibit unlimited variability. During evolution, the phenotypic changes do not occur at random; instead, they are directional and restricted by the constraints imposed on them. Despite the perceived importance of characterizing the unevenness of these changes, studies on evolutionary constraints have been primarily qualitative in nature. In this review, we focus on the recent studies of evolutionary constraints, which are based on the quantification of high-dimensional phenotypic and genotypic data. Furthermore, we present a theoretical analysis that enables us to predict evolutionary constraints on the basis of phenotypic fluctuation, modeled on the fluctuation–response relationship in statistical physics. The review lays emphasis on the tight interactions between experimental and theoretical analyses in evolutionary biology that will contribute to a better understanding of evolutionary constraints.
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Funding
This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) [grant number 15H05746 (to CF)] and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) [grant numbers 17H06389 (to CF) and 17H06387 (to NI)].
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Furusawa, C., Irie, N. Toward understanding of evolutionary constraints: experimental and theoretical approaches. Biophys Rev 12, 1155–1161 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12551-020-00708-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12551-020-00708-2