Figure 5. Environmental perturbations regulate Hsp90, a central node that integrates stress sensing with the manifestation and generation of de novo variants.

Many environmental perturbations including heat, salinity, and drought have the potential to alter Hsp90 activity. This altered activity affects cryptic genetic variation, buffered and potentiated variants, de novo mutations, self-templating protein conformations, and epigenetic variation. All of these will in turn alter the relationship between genotype and phenotype.