Heterosis is prevalent among domesticated but not wild strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

ABSTRACT: Crosses between inbred but unrelated individuals often result in an increased fitness of the progeny. This phenomenon is known as heterosis and has been reported for wild and domesticated populations of plants and animals. Analysis of heterosis is often hindered by the fact that the genetic relatedness between analyzed organisms is only approximately known. We studied a collection of Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolates from wild and human-created habitats whose genomes were sequenced and thus their relatedness was fully known. We reasoned that if these strains accumulated different deleterious mutations at an approximately constant rate, then heterosis should be most visible in F1 heterozygotes from the least related parents. We found that heterosis was substantial and positively correlated

SUBMITTER: Plech M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3931565 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature