Exploring the Mutational Robustness of Nucleic Acids by Searching Genotype Neighborhoods in Sequence Space

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• 作者：Qingtong Zhou ; Xianbao Sun ; Xiaole Xia ; Zhou Fan ; Zhaofeng Luo ; Suwen Zhao ; Eugene ShakhnovichHaojun Liang
• 刊名：The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 19, 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：8
• 期：2
• 页码：407-414
• 全文大小：441K
• ISSN：1948-7185

文摘

To assess the mutational robustness of nucleic acids, many genome- and protein-level studies have been performed, where nucleic acids are treated as genetic information carriers and transferrers. However, the molecular mechanisms through which mutations alter the structural, dynamic, and functional properties of nucleic acids are poorly understood. Here we performed a SELEX in silico study to investigate the fitness distribution of the l-Arm-binding aptamer genotype neighborhoods. Two novel functional genotype neighborhoods were isolated and experimentally verified to have comparable fitness as the wild-type. The experimental aptamer fitness landscape suggests the mutational robustness is strongly influenced by the local base environment and ligand-binding mode, whereas bases distant from the binding pocket provide potential evolutionary pathways to approach the global fitness maximum. Our work provides an example of successful application of SELEX in silico to optimize an aptamer and demonstrates the strong sensitivity of mutational robustness to the site of genetic variation.