PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Daniel M. Weinreich
AU  - Yinghong Lan
AU  - Jacob Jaffe
AU  - Robert B. Heckendorn
TI  - The influence of higher-order epistasis on biological fitness landscape topography
AID  - 10.1101/164798
DP  - 2017 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 164798
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/18/164798.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/18/164798.full
AB  - The effect of a mutation on the organism often depends on what other mutations are already present in its genome. Geneticists refer to such mutational interactions as epistasis. Pairwise epistatic effects have been recognized for over a century, and their evolutionary implications have received theoretical attention for nearly as long. However, pairwise epistatic interactions themselves can vary with genomic background. This is called higher-order epistasis, and its consequences for evolution are much less well understood. Here, we assess the influence that higher-order epistasis has on the topography of 16 published, biological fitness landscapes. We find that on average, their effects on fitness landscape declines with order, and suggest that notable exceptions to this trend may deserve experimental scrutiny. We explore whether natural selection may have contributed to this finding, and conclude by highlight opportunities for further work dissecting the influence that epistasis of all orders has on the efficiency of natural selection.