The first large-scale fitness analysis of HIV in presence and absence of antiviral drugs has been presented in a recent publication. This study confirms expectations, in particular ruggedness and neutrality of the HIV fitness landscape, but it provides at the same time also unexpected results like long-range correlations and surprisingly little influence of antiviral agents on the landscape structure. Here, we make use of this occasion to present a brief account on the development of the landscape concept from a pure metaphor to an experimentally assisted tool for modeling and understanding evolution.

A revival of the landscape paradigm: Large scale data harvesting provides access to fitness landscapes
Peter Schuster

Complexity
Volume 17, Issue 5, pages 6–10, May/June 2012

http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cplx.21401