Abstract
The affiliations listed for the author are incorrect. The correct affiliations should read: 1 European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) - Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) Systems Biology Unit, Barcelona, Spain, 2 Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats (ICREA), Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), Barcelona, Spain.
Highlights
A general property of biological systems is that, despite their complexity, they are often little affected by mutations that inactivate genes
The overall phenotypic variance of a strain can be quantified from morphological measurements made on large numbers of individual cells [32]. This provides a measure of the stochastic robustness of a strain
Mutational robustness is a general property of biological systems, but how and why it evolves is unclear [18,19,22,34]
Summary
A general property of biological systems is that, despite their complexity, they are often little affected by mutations that inactivate genes. This property, termed mutational (or genetic) robustness, is widespread [1,2], but only poorly understood [3]. Mutational robustness has important implications for both disease and evolution, as it reduces the phenotypic expression of genetic change. During evolution, increased mutational robustness will decrease the short-term potential for phenotypic change. Mutational robustness can increase the long-term potential for evolution, because it facilitates the exploration of genotype space, expanding the ‘phenotypic neighborhood’ available to an organism [4,5,6]
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