Project description:Analysis of constitutive changes in gene expression patterns in populations of the nematode Caenorhabditis remanei experimentally evolved to either acute heat stress, acute oxidative stress or the lab environment. Results of this study demonstrate that acute heat stress and acute oxidative stress are complex traits with a unique genetic basis. Overall design: Pooled population RNA sequencing libraries were obtained from the ancestor population and three evolved populations: one biological replicate of the control selected population, one heat stress selected population and one oxidative stress selected population per replicate. Tissue was collected from populations of L1 larval worms.
Project description:Hybrid progeny can enjoy increased fitness and stress tolerance relative to their ancestral species, a phenomenon known as hybrid vigor. Though this phenomenon has been documented throughout the Eukarya, evolution of hybrid populations has yet to be explored experimentally in the lab. To fill this knowledge gap we created a pool of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. bayanus homoploid and aneuploid hybrids, and then investigated how selection in the form of incrementally increased temperature or ethanol impacted hybrid genome structure and adaptation. During 500 generations of continuous ammonia-limited, glucose-sufficient culture, temperature was raised from 25C to 46??C. This selection invariably resulted in nearly-complete loss of the S. bayanus genome, although the dynamics of genome loss differed among independent replicates. Temperature-evolved isolates were significantly more thermal tolerant and exhibited greater phenotypic plasticity than parental species and founding hybrids. By contrast, when the same hybrid pool was subjected to increases in exogenous ethanol from 0% to 14%, selection favored euploid S. cerevisiae x S. bayanus hybrids. Ethanol-evolved isolates exhibited significantly greater ethanol tolerance relative only to S. bayanus and one of the founding hybrids tested. Adaptation to thermal and ethanol stress manifested as heritable changes in cell wall structure demonstrated by resistance to zymolyase or micafungin treatment. This is the first study to show experimentally that the fate of interspecific hybrids critically depends on the type of selection they encounter during the course of evolution.
Project description:Divergent adaptation can be associated with reproductive isolation in the process of speciation. We recently demonstrated the link between divergent adaptation and the onset of reproductive isolation in experimental populations of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae evolved from a single progenitor in either a high-salt or a low-glucose environment. However, the genetic basis for adaptation and reproductive isolation remained unknown in this system. Here, we use whole-genome re-sequencing of representatives of three populations to identify 15 candidate mutations, six of which explained the adaptive increases in mitotic fitness in the two environments. In two populations evolved in high salt, two different mutations occurred in the proton efflux pump gene PMA1 and the global transcriptional repressor gene CYC8; the ENA genes encoding sodium efflux pumps were over-expressed once through expansion of this gene cluster and once as a result of the mutation in the regulator CYC8. In the population from low glucose, one mutation occurred in MDS3, which modulates growth at high pH, and one in MKT1, a global regulator of mRNAs encoding mitochondrial proteins, the latter recapitulating a naturally-occurring variant. A Dobzhansky-Muller (DM) incompatibility between the evolved alleles of PMA1 and MKT1 strongly depressed fitness in the low-glucose environment. This DM interaction is the first reported between experimentally evolved alleles of known genes and shows how reproductive isolation can arise rapidly when divergent selection is strong. Evolved and progenitor strains were grown in stressed and unstressed conditions to identify role of mutations in gene expression.
Project description:Hybrid progeny can enjoy increased fitness and stress tolerance relative to their ancestral species, a phenomenon known as hybrid vigor. Though this phenomenon has been documented throughout the Eukarya, evolution of hybrid populations has yet to be explored experimentally in the lab. To fill this knowledge gap we created a pool of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and S. bayanus homoploid and aneuploid hybrids, and then investigated how selection in the form of incrementally increased temperature or ethanol impacted hybrid genome structure and adaptation. During 500 generations of continuous ammonia-limited, glucose-sufficient culture, temperature was raised from 25C to 46??C. This selection invariably resulted in nearly-complete loss of the S. bayanus genome, although the dynamics of genome loss differed among independent replicates. Temperature-evolved isolates were significantly more thermal tolerant and exhibited greater phenotypic plasticity than parental species and founding hybrids. By contrast, when the same hybrid pool was subjected to increases in exogenous ethanol from 0% to 14%, selection favored euploid S. cerevisiae x S. bayanus hybrids. Ethanol-evolved isolates exhibited significantly greater ethanol tolerance relative only to S. bayanus and one of the founding hybrids tested. Adaptation to thermal and ethanol stress manifested as heritable changes in cell wall structure demonstrated by resistance to zymolyase or micafungin treatment. This is the first study to show experimentally that the fate of interspecific hybrids critically depends on the type of selection they encounter during the course of evolution. Array-CGH was performed on the S. cerevisiae parent strain CEN.PK (GSY2160), the S. bayanus parent strain CBS7001 (GSY2161) and on the F1 interspecific hybrid resulting from mating the 2 parents (GSY2168). Additionally, three rare viable spores obtained after sporulation of the F1 were assayed by array-CGH (F2a, F2b, F2c). A large pool of F2 spores (and probably some number of F1 hybrid cells) were subjected to gradually increasing temperatures, in three independent vessels, with populations sampled at various generation times. Likewise, the same pool was used to found populations in an additional three independent vessels, which were then subjected to gradually increasing ethanol concentrations (at constant temperature). Array-CGH was performed on three different clones from each of the three temperature vessels at the final 500 generation time point (T500 clones). Biological replicates of the T500 clones were performed (T500-new). Two self-self array-CGH hybridization controls were also performed (self-control). Array-CGH was performed on one clone from each of the three ethanol vessels taken at the 400 generation timepoint (EtOH400gen clones).
Project description:Aneuploidy is a hallmark of tumor cells, and yet the precise relationship between aneuploidy and a cell’s proliferative ability, or cellular fitness, has remained elusive. In this study, we have combined a detailed analysis of aneuploid clones isolated from laboratory-evolved populations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae with a systematic, genome-wide screen for the fitness effects of telomeric amplifications to address the relationship between aneuploidy and cellular fitness. We found that aneuploid clones rise to high population frequencies in nutrient-limited evolution experiments and show increased fitness relative to wild type. Direct competition experiments confirmed that three out of four aneuploid events isolated from evolved populations were themselves sufficient to improve fitness. To expand the scope beyond this small number of exemplars, we created a genome-wide collection of >1,800 diploid yeast strains, each containing a different telomeric amplicon (Tamp), ranging in size from 0.4 to 1,000 kb. Using pooled competition experiments in nutrient-limited chemostats followed by high-throughput sequencing of strain-identifying barcodes, we determined the fitness effects of these >1,800 Tamps under three different conditions. Our data revealed that the fitness landscape explored by telomeric amplifications is much broader than that explored by single-gene amplifications. As also observed in the evolved clones, we found the fitness effects of most Tamps to be condition specific, with a minority showing common effects in all three conditions. By integrating our data with previous work that examined the fitness effects of single-gene amplifications genome-wide, we found that a small number of genes within each Tamp are centrally responsible for each Tamp’s fitness effects. Our genome-wide Tamp screen confirmed that telomeric amplifications identified in laboratory-evolved populations generally increased fitness. Our results show that Tamps are mutations that produce large, typically condition-dependent changes in fitness that are important drivers of increased fitness in asexually evolving populations.
Project description:The aim of this project was to evaluate the ploidy of a S. cerevisiae *S. kudriavzevii hybrid in comparison to the lab strain S288C. Other wine yeast have been icluded in the project for the global analysis.