Mutational Robustness of Ribosomal Protein Genes

Abstract

Keeping Fit Mutations may be deleterious, neutral, or advantageous. Understanding the relative effect of a new mutation on an organism's fitness is important for many systems from complex diseases to conservation biology. Lind et al. (p. 825 ) used the bacterium Salmonella typhimurium to study the effects of random mutations in two ribosomal proteins on fitness. Most mutations, whether synonymous or nonsynonymous, had significant fitness costs, thus overturning the prevailing dogma that most point mutations are either neutral or lethal and indicating that the mutations influenced messenger RNA structure and/or stability.