Theory predicts that well-adapted populations may evolve mechanisms to counteract the inevitable influx of deleterious mutations. While mutational robustness can be directly selected in the laboratory, evidence for its spontaneous evolution during general adaptation is mixed. Moreover, whether robustness evolves to include pleiotropic effects remains largely unexplored. Here, we studied the effects of point mutations in the RNA polymerase ofEscherichia coliover a 15,000-generation adaptive trajectory. Fitness effects of both beneficial and deleterious mutations were attenuated in fitter backgrounds. In contrast, pleiotropic effects became more severe and widespread with greater adaptation. These results show that trade-offs between robustness and fragility can evolve in regulatory networks, regardless of whether driven by adaptive or nonadaptive processes. More broadly, they illustrate how adaptation can generate hidden variability, with unpredictable evolutionary consequences in new environments.
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Dynamics and variability in the pleiotropic effects of adaptation in laboratory budding yeast populations
Evolutionary adaptation to a constant environment is driven by the accumulation of mutations which can have a range of unrealized pleiotropic effects in other environments. These pleiotropic consequences of adaptation can influence the emergence of specialists or generalists, and are critical for evolution in temporally or spatially fluctuating environments. While many experiments have examined the pleiotropic effects of adaptation at a snapshot in time, very few have observed the dynamics by which these effects emerge and evolve. Here, we propagated hundreds of diploid and haploid laboratory budding yeast populations in each of three environments, and then assayed their fitness in multiple environments over 1000 generations of evolution. We find that replicate populations evolved in the same condition share common patterns of pleiotropic effects across other environments, which emerge within the first several hundred generations of evolution. However, we also find dynamic and environment-specific variability within these trends: variability in pleiotropic effects tends to increase over time, with the extent of variability depending on the evolution environment. These results suggest shifting and overlapping contributions of chance and contingency to the pleiotropic effects of adaptation, which could influence evolutionary trajectories in complex environments that fluctuate across space and time.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1914916
- PAR ID:
- 10337439
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- eLife
- Volume:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 2050-084X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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