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What is Antagonistic Pleiotropy?

View ORCID ProfileJosh Mitteldorf
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/321588
Josh Mitteldorf
1Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA
2National Institute for Biological Sciences, Beijing, China
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Abstract

Antagonistic Pleiotropy has been the dominant theory for evolution of aging since it was first proposed 60 years ago. Indeed, examples of pleiotropy have been observed, but there are also many examples of mutations that lead to longer lifespan without apparent cost. This poses a dilemma for the logic of the theory, which depends critically on the assumption that pleiotropy has imposed an inescapable precondition on evolution. Another interpretation is possible for the pleiotropy observed in nature. Natural selection may actually favor pleiotropy as an evolved adaptation. This is because the combination of high fertility and long lifespan is a temptation for individuals, but a danger for the health of populations. Predator populations that grow faster than their prey can recover are at risk of extinction. Once a sustainable mix of fertility and longevity has been established by multilevel natural selection, pleiotropy can help to assure that it is not lost. The population is free to shift from (high fertility/short lifespan) to (lower fertility/longer lifespan) as varying environmental conditions demand, without risking population overshoot and collapse. I describe herein experiments with an individual-based computer simulation in which pleiotropy evolves as a group-selected adaptation under a range of assumptions and in a broad swath of parameter space.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 15, 2018.
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What is Antagonistic Pleiotropy?
Josh Mitteldorf
bioRxiv 321588; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/321588
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What is Antagonistic Pleiotropy?
Josh Mitteldorf
bioRxiv 321588; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/321588

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