Adaptive evolution of nontransitive fitness in yeast

A common misconception is that evolution is a linear 'march of progress', where each organism along a line of descent is more fit than all those that came before it. Rejecting this misconception implies that evolution is nontransitive: a series of adaptive events will, on occasion, produce...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published ineLife Vol. 9
Main Authors Buskirk, Sean W, Rokes, Alecia B, Lang, Gregory I
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England eLife Science Publications, Ltd 29.12.2020
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
Subjects
Adaptation, Physiological
Biological Evolution
Comparative analysis
Evolution
Evolutionary Biology
experimental evolution
Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal
Gene mutations
Genetic Fitness
Genomics
killer virus
nontransitivity
Saccharomyces cerevisiae - genetics
Saccharomyces cerevisiae - physiology
Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins - genetics
Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins - metabolism
killer virus
evolutionary biology
experimental evolution
nontransitivity
S. cerevisiae
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:A common misconception is that evolution is a linear 'march of progress', where each organism along a line of descent is more fit than all those that came before it. Rejecting this misconception implies that evolution is nontransitive: a series of adaptive events will, on occasion, produce organisms that are less fit compared to a distant ancestor. Here we identify a nontransitive evolutionary sequence in a 1000-generation yeast evolution experiment. We show that nontransitivity arises due to adaptation in the yeast nuclear genome combined with the stepwise deterioration of an intracellular virus, which provides an advantage over viral competitors within host cells. Extending our analysis, we find that nearly half of our ~140 populations experience multilevel selection, fixing adaptive mutations in both the nuclear and viral genomes. Our results provide a mechanistic case-study for the adaptive evolution of nontransitivity due to multilevel selection in a 1000-generation host/virus evolution experiment.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
Department of Biology, West Chester University, West Chester, United States.
ISSN:2050-084X
2050-084X
DOI:10.7554/ELIFE.62238