Experimental characterization of the interplay between cellular proliferation rate and evolvability

Determine experimentally the quantitative relationship between cellular proliferation rate (division rate) and evolvability potential, defined as the capacity of a cell population to generate heritable phenotypic variation in proliferative potential. Specifically, characterize how variation in evolvability affects proliferation and how proliferation rate influences evolvability, and provide measurements that can parameterize and validate phenotype-structured models of adaptation in asexual cell populations.

Background

The paper models evolvability as a phenotypic trait that modulates the probability of heritable changes in proliferative potential and studies adaptive dynamics using both a stochastic individual-based model and a deterministic continuum partial integro-differential equation. While the modeling framework assumes a relationship between evolvability and proliferation, the authors emphasize that this relationship is currently not established by experiments.

Because the interaction between evolvability and proliferative potential is unknown, the analysis is approached qualitatively, highlighting the need for empirical measurements to ground and validate theoretical predictions and to inform the construction and parameterization of models that couple evolvability with growth dynamics.