{"id":59815,"date":"2018-03-21T17:30:35","date_gmt":"2018-03-21T17:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/?p=59815"},"modified":"2018-03-21T17:30:35","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T17:30:35","slug":"kondrashovs-paper-synergistic-epistasis-soft-selection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/theskepticalzone.com\/wp\/kondrashovs-paper-synergistic-epistasis-soft-selection\/","title":{"rendered":"Kondrashov’s Paper, Synergistic Epistasis, Soft Selection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regarding Kondrashov’s paper Why have we not died 100 times over?<\/a>, an internet “pupil” of mine who goes by the handle of “nomenmeum” asked what is synergistic epistasis and soft selection. The definition of synergistic epistasis seems to be the major issue as I don’t see the term much in literature. I don’t know exactly what it means. Does synergistic epistasis entail a change in S-coefficients? <\/p>\n

For example in Brenda Andrews’ double and triple knockout experiments with yeast, the corresponding single knockout experiments had little-to-no noticeable effects, but several double and triple knockouts would clearly have deleterious effect when their component individual single knockouts did not in isolation. <\/p>\n

Below is Brenda Andrews’ description of her experiment which I mentioned at Sandwalk in connection with the ENCODE 2015 planning meeting (Larry Moran knew Dr. Andrews as a graduate student at his school):
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