Fitness variation across subtle environmental perturbations reveals local modularity and global pleiotropy of adaptation

Grant Kinsler, Kerry Geiler-Samerotte, Dmitri Petrov

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

36 Scopus citations

Abstract

Building a genotype-phenotype-fitness map of adaptation is a central goal in evolutionary biology. It is difficult even when adaptive mutations are known because it is hard to enumerate which phenotypes make these mutations adaptive. We address this problem by first quantifying how the fitness of hundreds of adaptive yeast mutants responds to subtle environmental shifts. We then model the number of phenotypes these mutations collectively influence by phenotypes can predict fitness of the adaptive mutations near their original glucose-limited evolution condition. Importantly, inferred phenotypes that matter little to fitness at or near the decomposing these patterns of fitness variation. We find that a small number of inferred evolution condition can matter strongly in distant environments. This suggests that adaptive mutations are locally modular—affecting a small number of phenotypes that matter to fitness in the environment where they evolved—yet globally pleiotropic—affecting additional phenotypes that may reduce or improve fitness in new environments.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article numbere61271
Pages (from-to)1-52
Number of pages52
JournaleLife
Volume9
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2020

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Neuroscience
  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Immunology and Microbiology

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