A cartoon representation of landscapes that map sequence to function

A cartoon representation of landscapes that map sequence to function 

Since this representation of sequence space would be extremely complicated to view and apprehend, we choose to use a simplified cartoon. The cartoon representation of a fitness landscape (Fig. 3) used in this chapter has only three dimensions. The z-axis scales the relative fitness of molecules. Fitness is arbitrarily defined, and may pertain to how well an RNA binds to a particular ligand, or how well it catalyzes a desired reaction. The sequences on the top of the cartoon peaks have a higher degree of fitness than the ones on the plateau. The xy-plane represents a two-dimensional apparition of much more complex sequence spaces. Sequences that have smaller Hamming distances would be closer 

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