Data from: The mutational structure of metabolism in Caenorhabditis elegans

A properly functioning organism must maintain metabolic homeostasis.
Deleterious mutations degrade organismal function, presumably at least in
part via effects on metabolic function. Here we present an initial
investigation into the mutational structure of the Caenorhabditis elegans
metabolome by means of a mutation accumulation experiment. We find that
pool sizes of 29 metabolites vary greatly in their vulnerability to
mutation, both in terms of the rate of accumulation of genetic variance
(the mutational variance, VM) and the rate of change of the trait mean
(the mutational bias, ΔM). Strikingly, some metabolites are much more
vulnerable to mutation than any other trait previously studied in the same
way. Although we cannot statistically assess the strength of mutational
correlations between individual metabolites, principal component analysis
provides strong evidence that some metabolite pools are genetically
correlated, but also that there is substantial scope for independent
evolution of different groups of metabolites. Averaged over mutation
accumulation lines, PC3 is positively correlated with relative fitness,
but a model in which metabolites are uncorrelated with fitness is nearly
as good by Akaike's Information Criterion.