Mistranslation can promote the exploration of alternative evolutionary trajectories in enzyme evolution.

Abstract excerpt

Darwinian evolution preferentially follows mutational pathways whose individual steps increase fitness. Alternative pathways with mutational steps that do not increase fitness are less accessible. Here, we show that mistranslation, the erroneous incorporation of amino acids into nascent proteins, can increase the accessibility of such alternative pathways and, ultimately, of high fitness genotypes. We subject...

Topics

• Anti-Bacterial Agents
• Cefotaxime
• Epistasis, Genetic
• Escherichia coli
• Evolution, Molecular
• Models, Genetic
• Mutation