Loss of heterozygosity results in rapid but variable genome homogenization across yeast genetic backgrounds

Upper Bound on the Mutational Burden Imposed by a CRISPR-Cas9 Gene-Drive Element

CRISPR-Cas9 gene drives (CCGDs) are powerful tools for genetic control of wild populations, useful for eradication of disease vectors, conservation of endangered species and other applications. However, Cas9 alone and in a complex with gRNA can cause double-stranded DNA breaks at off-target sites, which could increase the mutational load and lead to loss of heterozygosity (LOH). These undesired effects raise potential concerns about the long-term evolutionary safety of CCGDs, but the magnitude of these effects is unknown. To estimate how the presence of a CCGD or a Cas9 alone in the genome affects the rates of LOH events and de novo mutations, we carried out a mutation accumulation experiment in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Despite its substantial statistical power, our experiment revealed no detectable effect of CCGD or Cas9 alone on the genome-wide rates of mutations or LOH events, suggesting that these rates are affected by less than 30%. Nevertheless, we found that Cas9 caused a slight but significant shift towards more interstitial and fewer terminal LOH events, and the CCGD caused a significant difference in the distribution of LOH events on Chromosome V. Taken together, our results show that these genetic elements impose a weak and likely localized additional mutational burden in the yeast model. Although the mutagenic effects of CCGDs need to be further evaluated in other systems, our results suggest that the effect of CCGDs on off-target mutation rates and genetic diversity may be acceptable.

The Dynamic Fungal Genome: Polyploidy, Aneuploidy and Copy Number Variation in Response to Stress

Fungal species have dynamic genomes and often exhibit genomic plasticity in response to stress. This genome plasticity often comes with phenotypic consequences that affect fitness and resistance to stress. Fungal pathogens exhibit genome plasticity in both clinical and agricultural settings and often during adaptation to antifungal drugs, posing significant challenges to human health. Therefore, it is important to understand the rates, mechanisms, and impact of large genomic changes. This review addresses the prevalence of polyploidy, aneuploidy, and copy number variation across diverse fungal species, with special attention to prominent fungal pathogens and model species. We also explore the relationship between environmental stress and rates of genomic changes and highlight the mechanisms underlying genotypic and phenotypic changes. A comprehensive understanding of these dynamic fungal genomes is needed to identify novel solutions for the increase in antifungal drug resistance.

Detection of Mosaic Absence of Heterozygosity (AOH) Using Low-Pass Whole Genome Sequencing in Prenatal Diagnosis: A Preliminary Report

Objective: Mosaicism is a common biological phenomenon in organisms and has been reported in many types of chromosome abnormalities, including the absence of heterozygosity (AOH). Due to the detection limitations of the sequencing approach, mosaic AOH events are rarely assessed in clinical cases. Herein, we report the performance of mosaic AOH identification using a low-pass (5~8-fold) WGS method (termed 'CMA-seq', an abbreviation for 'Chromosome Analysis by Sequencing') in fetal genetic diagnosis. Methods: Thirty AOH-negative, eleven constitutional AOH, and three mosaic AOH samples were collected as training data sets to develop the algorithm and evaluate the suitable thresholds for distinguishing mosaic AOH. Twenty-four new chromosomal aberrant cases, along with sixteen constitutional AOH samples, which were previously ascertained via the SNP-array-based method, were used as a validation data set to measure the performance in terms of sensitivity and specificity of this algorithm. Results: A new statistic, 'D-value', was implemented to identify and distinguish constitutional and mosaic AOH events. The reporting thresholds for constitutional and mosaic AOH were also established. In the validation set consisting of 24 new cases, seven constitutional AOH cases and 1 mosaic AOH case were successfully identified, indicating that the results were consistent with those of the SNP-array-based method. The results of all sixteen constitutional AOH validation samples also met the threshold requirements. Conclusions: In this study, we developed a new bioinformatic algorithm to accurately distinguish mosaic AOH from constitutional AOH by low-pass WGS. However, due to the small sample size of the training data set, the algorithm proposed in this manuscript still needs further refinements.

Loss of Heterozygosity and Its Importance in Evolution

Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) is a mitotic recombination event that converts heterozygous loci to homozygous loci. This mutation event is widespread in organisms that have asexual reproduction like budding yeasts, and is also an important and frequent mutation event in tumorigenesis. Mutation accumulation studies have demonstrated that LOH occurs at a rate higher than the point mutation rate, and can impact large portions of the genome. Laboratory evolution experiments of heterozygous yeasts have revealed that LOH often unmasks beneficial recessive alleles that can confer large fitness advantages. Here, I highlight advances in understanding dominance, fitness, and phenotypes in laboratory evolved heterozygous yeast strains. I discuss best practices for detecting LOH in intraspecific and interspecific evolved clones and populations. Utilizing heterozygous strain backgrounds in laboratory evolution experiments offers an opportunity to advance our understanding of this important mutation type in shaping adaptation and genome evolution in wild, domesticated, and clinical populations.

Identifying Targets of Selection in Laboratory Evolution Experiments

Adaptive evolution navigates a balance between chance and determinism. The stochastic processes of mutation and drift generate phenotypic variation; however, once mutations reach an appreciable frequency in the population, their fate is governed by the deterministic action of selection, enriching for favorable genotypes and purging the less-favorable ones. The net result is that replicate populations will traverse similar-but not identical-pathways to higher fitness. This parallelism in evolutionary outcomes can be leveraged to identify the genes and pathways under selection. However, distinguishing between beneficial and neutral mutations is challenging because many beneficial mutations will be lost due to drift and clonal interference, and many neutral (and even deleterious) mutations will fix by hitchhiking. Here, we review the best practices that our laboratory uses to identify genetic targets of selection from next-generation sequencing data of evolved yeast populations. The general principles for identifying the mutations driving adaptation will apply more broadly.

Enforcement of Postzygotic Species Boundaries in the Fungal Kingdom

Understanding the molecular basis of speciation is a primary goal in evolutionary biology. The formation of the postzygotic reproductive isolation that causes hybrid dysfunction, thereby reducing gene flow between diverging populations, is crucial for speciation. Using various advanced approaches, including chromosome replacement, hybrid introgression and transcriptomics, population genomics, and experimental evolution, scientists have revealed multiple mechanisms involved in postzygotic barriers in the fungal kingdom. These results illuminate both unique and general features of fungal speciation. Our review summarizes experiments on fungi exploring how Dobzhansky-Muller incompatibility, killer meiotic drive, chromosome rearrangements, and antirecombination contribute to postzygotic reproductive isolation. We also discuss possible evolutionary forces underlying different reproductive isolation mechanisms and the potential roles of the evolutionary arms race under the Red Queen hypothesis and epigenetic divergence in speciation.

Evolution of yeast hybrids by aborted meiosis

Sterile hybrids are broadly considered evolutionary dead-ends because of their faulty sexual reproduction. While sterility in obligate sexual organisms is a clear constraint in perpetuating the species, some facultative sexual microbes such as yeasts can propagate asexually and maintain genome plasticity. Moreover, incomplete meiotic pathways in yeasts represent alternative routes to the standard meiosis that generates genetic combinations in the population and fuel adaptation. Here, we review how aborting meiosis promotes genome-wide allele shuffling in sterile Saccharomyces hybrids and describe approaches to identify evolved clones in a cell population. We further discuss possible implications of this process in generating phenotypic novelty and report cases of abortive meiosis across yeast species.

Challenges and potential solutions for studying the genetic and phenotypic architecture of adaptation in microbes

All organisms are defined by the makeup of their DNA. Over billions of years, the structure and information contained in that DNA, often referred to as genetic architecture, have been honed by a multitude of evolutionary processes. Mutations that cause genetic elements to change in a way that results in beneficial phenotypic change are more likely to survive and propagate through the population in a process known as adaptation. Recent work reveals that the genetic targets of adaptation are varied and can change with genetic background. Further, seemingly similar adaptive mutations, even within the same gene, can have diverse and unpredictable effects on phenotype. These challenges represent major obstacles in predicting adaptation and evolution. In this review, we cover these concepts in detail and identify three emerging synergistic solutions: higher-throughput evolution experiments combined with updated genotype-phenotype mapping strategies and physiological models. Our review largely focuses on recent literature in yeast, and the field seems to be on the cusp of a new era with regard to studying the predictability of evolution.

Generation of stable homozygous transformants of diploid yeasts such as Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous

The nonconventional yeast Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous is an established platform for genetic pathway modification. A genetic tool box is available and can be used extensively to select from for different engineering strategies. Due to the diploid nature of X. dendrorhous, genetic transformation typically results in heterozygous lines. They are genetically unstable and lose their phenotypes caused by mitotic recombination. In addition, targeted integration for inactivation of genes of the carotenoid pathway resulted in an intermediary phenotype of incomplete pathway disruption. This issue is the main scope of this review. It is illustrated by using genetic modification of the carotenoid pathway of X. dendrorhous as a model system with a focus on the demonstration of how to solve these problems by generation of homozygous lines. They can be selected from heterozygous transformants after spontaneous mitotic recombination and selection or after induced meiotic recombination. Corresponding methods of how to proceed including the initiation of a sexual cycle are described. The selected segregated lines are stable in fermenter cultures without the need of selection pressure. This is an essential requirement for any industrial application. KEY POINTS: • Genetic interventions of diploid yeasts result in heterozygous transformants that are unstable without selection pressure. • This is due to mitotic recombination leading to the elimination of inserted DNA. • Stable homozygous lines can be obtained and selected after either meiotic or mitotic recombination.

The evolutionary and ecological potential of yeast hybrids

Recent findings in yeast genetics and genomics have advanced our understanding of the evolutionary potential unlocked by hybridization, especially in the genus Saccharomyces. We now have a clearer picture of the prevalence of yeast hybrids in the environment, their ecological and evolutionary history, and the genetic mechanisms driving (and constraining) their adaptation. Here, we describe how the instability of hybrid genomes determines fitness across large evolutionary scales, highlight new hybrid strain engineering techniques, and review tools for comparative hybrid genome analysis. The recent push to take yeast research back 'into the wild' has resulted in new genomic and ecological resources. These provide an arena for quantitative genetics and allow us to investigate the architecture of complex traits and mechanisms of adaptation to rapidly changing environments. The vast genetic diversity of hybrid populations can yield insights beyond those possible with isogenic lines. Hybrids offer a limitless supply of genetic variation that can be tapped for industrial strain improvement but also, combined with experimental evolution, can be used to predict population responses to future climate change - a fundamental task for biologists.

Brettanomyces bruxellensis: Overview of the genetic and phenotypic diversity of an anthropized yeast

Human-associated microorganisms are ideal models to study the impact of environmental changes on species evolution and adaptation because of their small genome, short generation time, and their colonization of contrasting and ever-changing ecological niches. The yeast Brettanomyces bruxellensis is a good example of organism facing anthropogenic-driven selective pressures. It is associated with fermentation processes in which it can be considered either as a spoiler (e.g. winemaking, bioethanol production) or as a beneficial microorganism (e.g. production of specific beers, kombucha). Besides its industrial interests, noteworthy parallels and dichotomies with Saccharomyces cerevisiae propelled B. bruxellensis as a valuable complementary yeast model. In this review, we emphasize that the broad genetic and phenotypic diversity of this species is only beginning to be uncovered. Population genomic studies have revealed the co-existence of auto- and allotriploidization events with different evolutionary outcomes. The different diploid, autotriploid and allotriploid subpopulations are associated with specific fermented processes, suggesting independent adaptation events to anthropized environments. Phenotypically, B. bruxellensis is renowned for its ability to metabolize a wide variety of carbon and nitrogen sources, which may explain its ability to colonize already fermented environments showing low-nutrient contents. Several traits of interest could be related to adaptation to human activities (e.g. nitrate metabolization in bioethanol production, resistance to sulphite treatments in winemaking). However, phenotypic traits are insufficiently studied in view of the great genomic diversity of the species. Future work will have to take into account strains of varied substrates, geographical origins as well as displaying different ploidy levels to improve our understanding of an anthropized yeast's phenotypic landscape.

Genome-scale patterns in the loss of heterozygosity incidence in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Former studies have established that loss of heterozygosity can be a key driver of sequence evolution in unicellular eukaryotes and tissues of metazoans. However, little is known about whether the distribution of loss of heterozygosity events is largely random or forms discernible patterns across genomes. To initiate our experiments, we introduced selectable markers to both arms of all chromosomes of the budding yeast. Subsequent extensive assays, repeated over several genetic backgrounds and environments, provided a wealth of information on the genetic and environmental determinants of loss of heterozygosity. Three findings stand out. First, the number of loss of heterozygosity events per unit time was more than 25 times higher for growing than starving cells. Second, loss of heterozygosity was most frequent when regions of homology around a recombination site were identical, about a half-% sequence divergence was sufficient to reduce its incidence. Finally, the density of loss of heterozygosity events was highly dependent on the genome's physical architecture. It was several-fold higher on short chromosomal arms than on long ones. Comparably large differences were seen within a single arm where regions close to a centromere were visibly less affected than regions close, though usually not strictly adjacent, to a telomere. We suggest that the observed uneven distribution of loss of heterozygosity events could have been caused not only by an uneven density of initial DNA damages. Location-depended differences in the mode of DNA repair, or its effect on fitness, were likely to operate as well.

Saccharomyces yeast hybrids on the rise

Saccharomyces hybrid yeasts are receiving increasing attention as a powerful model system to understand adaptation to environmental stress and speciation mechanisms, using experimental evolution and omics techniques. We compiled all genomic resources available from public repositories of the eight recognized Saccharomyces species and their interspecific hybrids. We present the newest numbers on genomes sequenced, assemblies, annotations, and sequencing runs, and an updated species phylogeny using orthogroup inference. While genomic resources are highly skewed towards Saccharomyces cerevisiae, there is a noticeable movement to use wild, recently discovered yeast species in recent years. To illustrate the degree and potential causes of reproductive isolation, we reanalyzed published data on hybrid spore viabilities across the entire genus and tested for the role of genetic, geographic, and ecological divergence within and between species (28 cross types and 371 independent crosses). Hybrid viability generally decreased with parental genetic distance likely due to antirecombination and negative epistasis, but notable exceptions emphasize the importance of strain-specific structural variation and ploidy differences. Surprisingly, the viability of crosses within species varied widely, from near reproductive isolation to near-perfect viability. Geographic and ecological origins of the parents predicted cross viability to an extent, but with certain caveats. Finally, we highlight publication trends in the field and point out areas of special interest, where hybrid yeasts are particularly promising for innovation through research and development, and experimental evolution and fermentation.

A modified fluctuation assay reveals a natural mutator phenotype that drives mutation spectrum variation within Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Although studies of Saccharomyces cerevisiae have provided many insights into mutagenesis and DNA repair, most of this work has focused on a few laboratory strains. Much less is known about the phenotypic effects of natural variation within S. cerevisiae’s DNA repair pathways. Here, we use natural polymorphisms to detect historical mutation spectrum differences among several wild and domesticated S. cerevisiae strains. To determine whether these differences are likely caused by genetic mutation rate modifiers, we use a modified fluctuation assay with a CAN1 reporter to measure de novo mutation rates and spectra in 16 of the analyzed strains. We measure a 10-fold range of mutation rates and identify two strains with distinctive mutation spectra. These strains, known as AEQ and AAR, come from the panel’s ‘Mosaic beer’ clade and share an enrichment for C > A mutations that is also observed in rare variation segregating throughout the genomes of several Mosaic beer and Mixed origin strains. Both AEQ and AAR are haploid derivatives of the diploid natural isolate CBS 1782, whose rare polymorphisms are enriched for C > A as well, suggesting that the underlying mutator allele is likely active in nature. We use a plasmid complementation test to show that AAR and AEQ share a mutator allele in the DNA repair gene OGG1, which excises 8-oxoguanine lesions that can cause C > A mutations if left unrepaired.

Overdominant Mutations Restrict Adaptive Loss of Heterozygosity at Linked Loci

Loss of heterozygosity is a common mode of adaptation in asexual diploid populations. Because mitotic recombination frequently extends the full length of a chromosome arm, the selective benefit of loss of heterozygosity may be constrained by linked heterozygous mutations. In a previous laboratory evolution experiment with diploid yeast, we frequently observed homozygous mutations in the WHI2 gene on the right arm of Chromosome XV. However, when heterozygous mutations arose in the STE4 gene, another common target on Chromosome XV, loss of heterozygosity at WHI2 was not observed. Here, we show that mutations at WHI2 are partially dominant and that mutations at STE4 are overdominant. We test whether beneficial heterozygous mutations at these two loci interfere with one another by measuring loss of heterozygosity at WHI2 over 1,000 generations for ∼300 populations that differed initially only at STE4 and WHI2. We show that the presence of an overdominant mutation in STE4 reduces, but does not eliminate, loss of heterozygosity at WHI2. By sequencing 40 evolved clones, we show that populations with linked overdominant and partially dominant mutations show less parallelism at the gene level, more varied evolutionary outcomes, and increased rates of aneuploidy. Our results show that the degree of dominance and the phasing of heterozygous beneficial mutations can constrain loss of heterozygosity along a chromosome arm, and that conflicts between partially dominant and overdominant mutations can affect evolutionary outcomes.