{"doi":"10.1098/rspb.2012.0956","title":"Environmental change exposes beneficial epistatic interactions in a catalytic RNA","abstract":"<jats:p>\n            Natural selection drives populations of individuals towards local peaks in a fitness landscape. These peaks are created by the interactions between individual mutations. Fitness landscapes may change as an environment changes. In a previous contribution, we discovered a variant of the\n            <jats:italic>Azoarcus</jats:italic>\n            group I ribozyme that represents a local peak in the RNA fitness landscape. The genotype at this peak is distinguished from the wild-type by four point mutations. We here report ribozyme fitness data derived from constructing all possible combinations of these point mutations. We find that these mutations interact epistatically. Importantly, we show that these epistatic interactions change qualitatively in the three different environments that we studied. We find examples where the relative fitness of a ribozyme can change from neutral or negative in one environment, to positive in another. We also show that the fitness effect of a specific GC–AU base pair switch is dependent on both the environment and the genetic context. Moreover, the mutations that we study improve activity at the cost of decreased structural stability. Environmental change is ubiquitous in nature. Our results suggest that such change can facilitate adaptive evolution by exposing new peaks of a fitness landscape. They highlight a prominent role for genotype–environment interactions in doing so.\n          </jats:p>","journal":"Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences","year":2012,"id":642626,"datarank":1.2044912460504795,"base_score":3.4011973816621555,"endowment":3.4011973816621555,"self_citation_contribution":0.5101796072493234,"citation_network_contribution":0.694311638801156,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5101796072493234,"citer_contribution":0.694311638801156,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":29,"citer_count":25,"citers_with_citation_signal":21,"citers_with_endowment":21,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":127547,"name":"Andreas Wagner","orcid":"0000-0003-4299-3840","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":480856,"name":"Eric J. Hayden","orcid":"0000-0001-6078-5418","position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"has_enrichment":true,"resolved":true,"title":"Environmental change exposes beneficial epistatic interactions in a catalytic RNA","abstract":"<jats:p>\n            Natural selection drives populations of individuals towards local peaks in a fitness landscape. These peaks are created by the interactions between individual mutations. Fitness landscapes may change as an environment changes. In a previous contribution, we discovered a variant of the\n            <jats:italic>Azoarcus</jats:italic>\n            group I ribozyme that represents a local peak in the RNA fitness landscape. The genotype at this peak is distinguished from the wild-type by four point mutations. We here report ribozyme fitness data derived from constructing all possible combinations of these point mutations. We find that these mutations interact epistatically. Importantly, we show that these epistatic interactions change qualitatively in the three different environments that we studied. We find examples where the relative fitness of a ribozyme can change from neutral or negative in one environment, to positive in another. We also show that the fitness effect of a specific GC–AU base pair switch is dependent on both the environment and the genetic context. Moreover, the mutations that we study improve activity at the cost of decreased structural stability. Environmental change is ubiquitous in nature. Our results suggest that such change can facilitate adaptive evolution by exposing new peaks of a fitness landscape. They highlight a prominent role for genotype–environment interactions in doing so.\n          </jats:p>","is_dataset_classified":null,"base_score":3.4011973816621555,"endowment":3.4011973816621555,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"views":0,"has_version_chain":false,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"pmid":"22719036","pmcid":"PMC3396916","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/W2126304668","authors":[],"funders":[{"funder_name":"Swiss National Science Foundation","grant_id":"315200","title":null},{"funder_name":"Swiss National Science Foundation","grant_id":"116814","title":null},{"funder_name":"Swiss National Science Foundation","grant_id":"129708","title":"Metabolic network analysis, design, and optimization through Metropolis sampling of network space."}],"total_grants":3,"fwci":2.2484,"citation_percentile":0.88436846,"influential_citations":0,"citation_trend":[{"year":2012,"count":1},{"year":2013,"count":5},{"year":2014,"count":2},{"year":2015,"count":4},{"year":2016,"count":2},{"year":2017,"count":4},{"year":2019,"count":1},{"year":2021,"count":3},{"year":2022,"count":4},{"year":2023,"count":1},{"year":2025,"count":2}],"oa_status":"bronze","license":"Royal Society Data Sharing and Accessibility","oa_locations":[{"url":"https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2012.0956","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2012.0956","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full-xml/10.1098/rspb.2012.0956","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.0956","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22719036","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/71715/6/Hayden_Wagner_Environmental_change.pdf","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3396916","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/3396916","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-71715","host_type":""},{"url":"https://dx.doi.org/10.5167/uzh-71715","host_type":""},{"url":"https://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.0956","host_type":""},{"url":"https://sonar.ch/global/documents/107508","host_type":""},{"url":"https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/71715/","host_type":""},{"url":"http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.0776","host_type":""}],"fields_of_study":["Evolution and Genetic Dynamics","RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms","Mathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models","0301 basic medicine","0303 health sciences","03 medical and health sciences","Adaptation, Physiological","Azoarcus","Epistasis, Genetic","Evolution, Molecular","Genetic Fitness","Genetic Variation","Mutagenesis","Mutation","RNA, Catalytic","Selection, Genetic"],"mesh_terms":["Adaptation, Physiological","Epistasis, Genetic","Mutation","Selection, Genetic","Genetic Variation","Mutagenesis","RNA, Catalytic","Evolution, Molecular","Azoarcus","Genetic Fitness"],"keywords":["Epistasis","Fitness landscape","Ribozyme","Biology","Context (archaeology)","Genetic Fitness","Environmental change","Genetics","RNA","Evolutionary biology","Ecology","Gene","Climate change","Population","Azoarcus","Genetic Variation","Epistasis, Genetic","1100 General Agricultural and Biological Sciences","Adaptation, Physiological","2300 General Environmental Science","Evolution, Molecular","10127 Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies","1300 General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology","Mutagenesis","2400 General Immunology and Microbiology","Mutation","570 Life sciences; biology","590 Animals (Zoology)","RNA, Catalytic","Selection, Genetic"],"sdg_mappings":[{"sdg_number":0,"sdg_label":"Life in Land"}],"linked_datasets":[],"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"database_accessions":[{"name":"pdb"}],"source":"live","citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-08-08T01:21:41.589624Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}