FIGURE 3 | The relationship between epistasis and genome complexity.
From the following article:
The evolution of sex: empirical insights into the roles of epistasis and drift
J. Arjan G. M. de Visser and Santiago F. Elena
Nature Reviews Genetics 8, 139-149 (February 2007)
doi:10.1038/nrg1985
Sanjuán and Elena107 compiled information from 21 studies that used diverse methodological approaches to look for epistasis in fitness traits. The organisms ranged from RNA viruses to pluricellular eukaryotes. The result from each study was recoded as follows: a value of -1 was assigned when significant negative epistasis was observed, -0.5 for non-significant negative epistasis, 0 when multiplicative effects were obtained, 0.5 for non-significant positive epistasis, and 1 for significant positive epistasis. Here the median value for each organism has been plotted. Most cases that reported positive epistasis correspond to organisms with simple genomes (RNA viruses), whereas cases of negative epistasis are associated with increased genome complexity (eukaryotes). Coloured backgrounds indicate groupings of RNA viruses (shown in orange), bacteria (shown in green), unicellular eukaryotes (shown in purple), and pluricellular eukaryotes (shown in yellow).
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