The Role of Randomness in Darwinian Evolution
Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: Historically, one of the most controversial aspects of Darwinian evolution has been the prominent role that randomness and random change play in it. Most biologists agree that mutations in DNA have random effects on fitness. However, fitness is a highly simplified scalar representation of an enormously complex phenotype. Challenges to Darwinian thinking have focused on such complex phenotypes. Whether mutations affect such complex phenotypes randomly is ill understood. Here I discuss three very different classes of well-studied molecular phenotypes in which mutations cause nonrandom changes, based on our current knowledge. What is more, this nonrandomness facilitates evolutionary adaptation. Thus, living beings may translate DNA change into nonrandom phenotypic change that facilitates Darwinian evolution.
Source: Philosophy of Science
DOI: 10.1086/663239
Author: Andreas Wagner
Language: English
Subfield: Genetics
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2179965372