Regensburg 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm
Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe
BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 3: Computational Biophysics I
BP 3.1: Vortrag
Montag, 17. März 2025, 09:30–09:45, H44
RNA plasticity emerges as an evolutionary response to fluctuating environments — •Paula García-Galindo1 and Sebastian E. Ahnert1,2 — 1Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge, Philippa Fawcett Drive, Cambridge CB3 0AS United Kingdom — 2The Alan Turing Institute, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, UK
Phenotypic plasticity, the ability of a single genotype to produce multiple distinct phenotypes, can be studied effectively using RNA. RNA is a dynamic macromolecule that probabilistically shifts its structure due to thermal fluctuations at the molecular scale. To model the evolution of RNA plasticity, we use the RNA sequence-to-structure non-deterministic mapping, a computationally tractable genotype-phenotype (GP) map where probabilistic phenotypes are derived from the Boltzmann distribution of structures for each RNA sequence. Through evolutionary simulations with periodic environmental switching on the GP map, we observe that RNA phenotypes adapt to these fluctuations by evolving toward optimal plasticity. These optimal phenotypes are defined by nearly equal Boltzmann probabilities for distinct structures, each representing the most advantageous configuration for alternating environments. Our findings demonstrate that phenotypic plasticity, a widespread biological phenomenon, is a fundamental evolutionary adaptation to fluctuating environments.
Keywords: Evolution; Plasticity; RNA