Plasticity as a Sign of Developmental Bias in the Evolution of Gene Regulatory Networks.

Abstract excerpt

Phenotypic plasticity is an organism's ability to produce a different phenotype in response to nongenetic perturbations such as environmental disturbances. Beneficial phenotypic plasticity can be important in evolution. After an environmental disturbance, it can delay extinction giving opportunity to the appearance of beneficial mutations. In addition, plasticity may also be one of the factors that define the...

Topics

• Gene Regulatory Networks
• Phenotype
• Biological Evolution
• Models, Genetic
• Animals
• Evolution, Molecular