As environmental conditions change organisms have to either change with them or face extinction. The ability of an organism to adapt is often the deciding factor on weather or not it will survive in a new or changing habitat. Having a storehouse of genetic mutations is an evolutionary failsafe against extinction. Hsp90 stores genetic mutations in the DNA with out letting them be expressed in the phenotype. This keeps a working phenotype expressed while other possibilities are hidden. As conditions change and Hsp90 is inhibited by stress, a flood of new phenotypes are expressed with the hope that one with a better capability to survive is exposed. Without this method of saving genetic mutations, a species would have to hope that it would encounter a beneficial mutation sometime soon after the environmental change. The possibility of this is low and would take a significant amount of time in which the species might die off. The ability to suddenly express a vast amount of mutations would cause fast and drastic changes in organisms and be responsible for evolutionary change or divergence of species.
Jennifer Davis
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