Figure 5

Point mutations have similar epistatic interactions to those of entire gene knockouts. (a) Comparison between the variance observed in double gene knockout mutants (rainbow dots, same as in Figure 2a) and the variance observed in mixed double mutants generated by combining a gene knockout with point mutations in a different gene (black dots). (b) The red curve is the diagonal slice of the plot in (a) (G₀₁ = G₁₀ within 20%, G = mean(G₀₁, G₁₀)), and the red shaded area is the 25 to 75% confidence interval for the mixed double mutant variance. For comparison, the blue curves describe the variance for double gene knockouts as in Figure 2c. As in Figure 2c, the red line has equation var(G, G) = 0.079 G.