Rare variants in hypermutable genes underlie common morphology and growth traits in wild Saccharomyces paradoxus.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the molecular basis of common traits is a primary challenge of modern genetics. One model holds that rare mutations in many genetic backgrounds may often phenocopy one another, together explaining the prevalence of the resulting trait in the population. For the vast majority of phenotypes, the role of rare variants and the evolutionary forces that underlie them are unknown. In this work, we use a population of Saccharomyces paradoxus yeast as a model system for the study of common trait variation. We observed an unusual, flocculation and invasive-growth phenotype in one-third of S. paradoxus strains, which were otherwise unrelated. In crosses with each strain in turn, these morphologies segregated as a recessive Mendelian phenotype, mapping either to IRA1 or to IRA2, yeast ho

SUBMITTER: Roop JI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3781977 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature