On the networked architecture of genotype spaces and its critical effects on molecular evolution

Abstract: Evolutionary dynamics is often viewed as a subtle process of change accumulation that causes a divergence among organisms and their genomes. However, this interpretation is an inheritance of a gradualistic view that has been challenged at the macroevolutionary, ecological, and molecular level. Actually, when the complex architecture of genotype spaces is taken into account, the evolutionary dynamics of molecular populations becomes intrinsically non-uniform, sharing deep qualitative and quantitative similarities with slowly driven physical systems: non-linear responses analogous to critical transitions, sudden state changes, or hysteresis, among others. Furthermore, the phenotypic plasticity inherent to genotypes transforms classical fitness landscapes into multiscapes where adaptation in response to an environmental change may be very fast. The quantitative nature of adaptive molecular processes is deeply dependent on a networks-of-networks multilayered structure of the map from genotype to function that we begin to unveil.