Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain:BY4716xYJM789 backcross strains Raw sequence reads

Determining the genetic and molecular mechanisms that give rise to genotype-environment interaction ('GxE') is important for many areas of biology, including agriculture, evolution, and medicine. To help advance knowledge regarding this topic, we dissect the genetic basis of GxE in which certain Saccharomyces cerevisiae cross progeny show extremely poor growth specifically on ethanol at 37°C. This environment differs from the standard condition used for culturing budding yeast in both its carbon source (ethanol as opposed to glucose) and temperature (37°C as opposed to 30°C). We show that poor growth on ethanol at 37°C is caused by a number of additive loci that individually exhibit gene-environment interactions with both carbon source and temperature. These loci show their largest effects when carbon source and temperature are simultaneously modified, suggesting their effect magnitudes are influenced by environmental stress. Consistent with this possibility, we clone three causal genes and find they encode functionally unrelated components of stress response. Thus, our work indicates that polymorphisms in stress response can collectively lead to gene- and genotype-environment interactions that vary in intensity across conditions in a stress level-dependent manner.