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Mutation

Enzymes of evolutionary change

Nature volume 401, pages 866–869 (1999)Cite this article

The future is unpredictable. Survival therefore depends on the generation of a large repertoire of biological diversity — the evolutionary equivalent of buying a large number of lottery tickets. Natural selection can be compared with drawing the lottery, in that a strong selection event reduces diversity because it allows only a small fraction of the original population to survive (the winners). Diversity then needs to be restored to allow future selections to be faced. In other words, genetic diversification needs to be a continuous process, and reports in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 1, Molecular Cell2 and the Journal of Biological Chemistry3 show how this might be done.

Most newly arising mutations either have no apparent effect or they are harmful. So mutagenesis has traditionally been viewed as an unavoidable consequence of imperfections in the processes of DNA replication and repair. But if diversity is essential to survival, and if mutagenesis is required to generate such diversity, perhaps mutagenesis has been positively selected for throughout evolution. The pioneering work of Nelson and colleagues4,5, along with the new papers1,2,3, supports this idea with the identification of several enzymes designed to generate mutations.

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Figure 1: Mutation rates and genetic adaptability (fitness).
Figure 2: Possible mechanisms for controlling mutase activity in Escherichia coli.

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  1. Faculté de Médecine Necker-Enfants Malades, Université R. Descartes, 156 rue de Vaugirard, Paris, 75730, Cedex 15, France

    Miroslav Radman

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  1. Miroslav Radman
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Correspondence to Miroslav Radman.

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Radman, M. Enzymes of evolutionary change. Nature 401, 866–869 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/44738

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