The authors of the new work said that the DNA mutations that drive evolution are not completely random and are more common in certain parts of the genome.
The DNA mutations that drive evolution are generally thought to be fairly random, but a new study suggests there is some order to this chaos. The researchers compared the genomes of hundreds of lab-grown plants and found that mutations are much less likely to occur in genes essential for survival.
Randomness plays a big role in evolution. There is a popular belief that DNA mutations can suddenly occur in the genome of an organism, and if these new properties help a living creature survive and reproduce, then the changes will be passed on to the next generation. Over time, these traits can become characteristic of a population or species.
Researchers from the University of California at Davis and the Max Planck Institute in a new work decided to check whether there is a pattern in the location of DNA mutations. To conduct the work, the authors grew several units of watercress in the lab and then sequenced their genomes and compared where the DNA mutations occurred.
We have always considered mutations to be largely random in the genome. It turns out that the mutation is very non-random, and it is non-random in the sense that it benefits the plant. This is a completely new way of looking at mutation.
Gray Monroe, lead author of the study
The authors grew plants under controlled laboratory conditions and tried to eliminate the non-random influence of natural selection. This means that plants that do not normally survive in the real world were not subjected to negative mutations during the experiment.
In hundreds of plant genomes, the team found more than a million mutations that seemed to be concentrated in certain parts. Areas with consistently low levels of mutations accounted for only a third of the total. When the scientists checked which genes were located in these regions, they found that many important genes are located there, including those involved in cell growth and gene expression.
