Journal
EVOLUTION
Volume 76, Issue 12, Pages 2811-2828Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/evo.14646
Keywords
Genetic divergence; melibiose; Saccharomyces cerevisiae; sympatry
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Funding
- DBT/Wellcome Trust (India Alliance) [IA/S/19/2/504632]
- Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Government of India [09/087(0873)/2017-EMR-I]
- Institute Post-doctoral Fellowship Program, IIT Bombay
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This study investigates the adaptive diversification of yeast in an environment containing melibiose as the carbon source. The results show that mutations in the GAL3 gene, involved in metabolic co-operation, drive the adaptive diversification. The study demonstrates the importance of metabolic co-operation with public resources in generating biological diversity.
Understanding the basis of biological diversity remains a central problem in evolutionary biology. Using microbial systems, adaptive diversification has been studied in (a) spatially heterogeneous environments, (b) temporally segregated resources, and (c) resource specialization in a homogeneous environment. However, it is not well understood how adaptive diversification can take place in a homogeneous environment containing a single resource. Starting from an isogenic population of yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we report rapid adaptive diversification, when propagated in an environment containing melibiose as the carbon source. The diversification is driven due to a public good enzyme alpha-galactosidase, which hydrolyzes melibiose into glucose and galactose. The diversification is driven by mutations at a single locus, in the GAL3 gene in the S. cerevisiae GAL/MEL regulon. We show that metabolic co-operation involving public resources could be an important mode of generating biological diversity. Our study demonstrates sympatric diversification of yeast starting from an isogenic population and provides detailed mechanistic insights into the factors and conditions responsible for generating and maintaining the population diversity.
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