Evolutionary Genomics of Yeast

项目摘要 遗传学和进化生物学的一个主要目标是了解基因型的变化如何影响 表型。影响适应性的遗传变异对于研究进化特别有用，因为自然 选择只对这些变体起作用。通过识别影响适应性的特定变体，我们可以开始 去理解驱动所有生物体不可思议的适应性的分子机制， 环境. 我们最近开发了一种方法，使我们能够以前所未有的效率编辑基因组 （~100%）和吞吐量，并精确测量每个编辑对健身的影响。在最初的屏幕中，我们 测量了两种酵母菌株之间16，000种天然遗传变异的适应性效应 啤酒。在这个试点实验中，我们在单一条件下单独测量了每个变体的影响。 我们发现，几乎所有强适应性效应都来自启动子变体，而不是蛋白质编码区， 并且这些在转录因子结合位点处尤其富集。 在这里，我们建议利用这个强大的系统来研究两个具有根本重要性的概念： Aim 1中选择在形成遗传变异中的作用，以及Aim中基因与环境（GxE）的相互作用 2.这个项目将揭示进化过程的关键见解，如果没有我们的科学家， 高通量精确基因组编辑技术。

Project summary A major goal of genetics and evolutionary biology is to understand how changes in genotype affect phenotype. Genetic variants affecting fitness are especially informative for investigating evolution, since natural selection acts exclusively on these variants. By identifying specific variants that influence fitness, we can begin to understand the molecular mechanisms driving the incredible adaptations of all organisms to their environments. We recently developed an approach that allows us to edit genomes with unprecedented efficiency (~100%) and throughput, and precisely measure each edit’s effect on fitness. In our initial screen, we measured the fitness effects of 16,000 natural genetic variants differing between two strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In this pilot experiment, we measured the effects of each variant in isolation, in a single condition. We found that nearly all strong fitness effects were from promoter variants, rather than protein-coding regions, and these were especially enriched at transcription factor binding sites. Here we propose to utilize this powerful system to investigate two concepts of fundamental importance: the role of selection in shaping genetic variation in Aim 1, and gene-by-environment (GxE) interactions in Aim 2. This project will reveal key insights into the evolutionary process that would be unapproachable without our high-throughput precision genome editing technology.