The Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity (IEB) integrates groups working on evolutionary ecology of animals and plants, (molecular) phylogeny and evolution, aquatic ecology, biocomplexity, and evolutionary bioinformatics. Our core question is "how biodiversity and biocomplexity at all levels of the biological hierarchy arises through evolutionary processes".

Example research at the IEB [ reload to see more ]

Description: Fitness landscape of model proteins under selection pressure for two target structures. The blue neutral network comprises sequences folding predominantly into the structure on the left (A), while the red neutral network corresponds to the structure on the right (B). Thin grey lines connect sequences with only one difference. Indicated is a mutational transition path consisting of four protein sequences (middle region of the figure; from left to right). Along this path the stability for the blue structure, and with it the corresponding hypothetical enzymatic activity, decreases while the stability for the red structure increases. Stability changes around the centers of the neutral networks are minute while stability ceases towards the borders. The overlap region between the two networks, however, can serve as a "bridge" gapping the low-fitness region between networks by providing bi-stable, multi-functional, intermediates. The availability of such multi-functional bridges is consisistent with the "Escape from Adaptive Conflict" (EAC) scenario of protein evolution, where multi-functionality evolves before gene duplication (solid arrows) as a compromise between conflicting adaptive requirements and subfunctionalisation serves as a resolution of this conflict after duplication (dashed arrows). The fate of the duplicates must depend on the fitness of the multi-functional protein. If its fitness is already high, then further specialisation might not provide any further advantage. If, on the other hand, fitness of the multi-functional intermediate is low, specialisation after duplication is likely to provide a true ``escape'' from the adaptive conflict. These two alternative scenarios are indicated in a hypothetical time series of an evolving population at the top. The network structure on the far right indicates that neutral networks occur as clusters in the much larger sequence space. This is part of the research of the Evolutionary Bioinformatics Group . Find out more about the Phenotypic Transitions in Molecular Evolution on their research page

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