Data from: Reverse plasticity underlies rapid evolution by clonal selection within populations of fibroblasts propagated on a novel soft substrate

Mechanical properties such as substrate stiffness are a ubiquitous feature
of a cell’s environment. Many types of animal cells exhibit canonical
phenotypic plasticity when grown on substrates of differing stiffness, in
vitro and in vivo. Whether such plasticity is a multivariate optimum due
to hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution, or instead is a
compromise between conflicting selective demands, is unknown. We addressed
these questions by means of experimental evolution of populations of mouse
fibroblasts propagated for approximately 90 cell generations on soft or
stiff substrates. The ancestral cells grow twice as fast on stiff
substrate as on soft substrate and exhibit the canonical phenotypic
plasticity. Soft-selected lines derived from a genetically diverse
ancestral population increased growth rate on soft substrate to the
ancestral level on stiff substrate and evolved the same multivariate
phenotype. The pattern of plasticity in the soft-selected lines was
opposite of the ancestral pattern, suggesting that reverse plasticity
underlies the observed rapid evolution. Conversely, growth rate and
phenotypes did not change in selected lines derived from clonal cells.
Overall, our results suggest that the changes were the result of genetic
evolution and not phenotypic plasticity per se. Whole-transcriptome
analysis revealed consistent differentiation between ancestral and
soft-selected populations, and that both emergent phenotypes and gene
expression tended to revert in the soft-selected lines. However, the
selected populations appear to have achieved the same phenotypic outcome
by means of at least two distinct transcriptional architectures related to
mechanotransduction and proliferation.