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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Jun 24.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Rev Genet. 2016 Mar 14;17(4):239–250. doi: 10.1038/nrg.2016.11

Figure 3. Schematic depiction of how single-position fitness landscapes change through time.

Figure 3

Horizontal rows correspond to each of the 20 possible amino acids at each site in a protein. a | At each site, the currently predominant amino acid (shown in bold outline) confers high fitness. b | The single-position fitness landscape of site 7, shown in isolation. c | Temporal change in the single-position fitness landscape. The relative fitness levels of different amino acids at the position change through time owing to changes in the genetic background (that is, substitutions at other sites) and/or changes in the environment. The depicted changes in fitness are modelled as a Poisson process. Adapted from Bazykin, G. A. Changing preferences: deformation of single position amino acid fitness landscapes and evolution of proteins. Biology Letters (2015) 11, 20150315, by permission of the Royal Society.