Dynamic fitness landscapes in biology: From predicting viral evolution to determining the cellular basis of complex organismal traits

Abstract

At the core of biology and evolution is the concept of "fitness landscapes" that quantitatively maps the genomic DNA sequence to RNA, to proteins, and eventually, to organismal characteristics (fitness). First, I will describe an almost one-to-one mapping of evolutionary biology and statistical physics, whereby fitness landscapes are analogous to free energy landscapes and evolution is its dynamic exploration. This analogy is universal across the kingdom of life. Second, I will demonstrate how we quantified the fitness landscape of a coronavirus and then used microfluidics to control the direction of viral evolution. Lastly, I will describe how fitness landscapes can be quantified in more complex organisms, from yeast to humans. By developing an approach to measure protein-protein interactions inside the cell, we aim to explain how individual genomic diversity in eukaryotes gives rise to their diversity in organismal characteristics.