Stress-induced hypermutation as a physical property of life, a force of natural selection and its role in four thought experiments
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The independence of genetic mutation rate from selection is central to neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. However, it has been continuously challenged for more than 30 years by experimental evidence of genetic mutation rate transiently increasing in response to stress (stress-induced hypermutation, SIH). The prominent concept of evolved evolvability (EE) explains that natural selection for strategies more competitive at evolutionary adaptation itself gives rise to mechanisms dynamically adjusting mutation rates to environmental stress. Here, we theoretically investigate the alternative (not mutually exclusive) hypothesis that SIH is an inherent physical property of all genetically reproducing life. We define stress as any condition lowering the capability of utilizing metabolic resources for genome storage and replication. This thermodynamical analysis indicates stress-induced increases in the genetic mutation rate in genome storage and in genome replication as inherent physical properties of genetically reproducing life. Further integrating SIH into an overall organismic thermodynamic budget identifies SIH as a force of natural selection, alongside death rate, replication rate and constitutive mutation rate differences. We execute four thought experiments with a non-recombinant lesion mutant strain to predict experimental observations due to SIH in response to different stresses and stress combinations. We find (1) acceleration of adaptation over models without SIH, (2) possibility of adaptation at high stresses which are not explicable by mutation in genome replication alone and (3) different adaptive potential under high growth-inhibiting versus high lethal stresses. The predictions are directly comparable to culture experiments (colony size time courses, antibacterial resistance assay and occurrence of lesion-reversion mutant colonies) and genome sequence analysis. Considering suggestions of drug-mediated disruption of SIH and attempts to target mutation-associated sites with chemotherapeutic agents to prevent resistance, our findings seem to be relevant knowledge for resistance-averse drug development and administration.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".