The Repertoire and Dynamics of Evolutionary Adaptations to Controlled Nutrient-Limited Environments in Yeast

The experimental evolution of laboratory populations of microbes provides an opportunity to observe the evolutionary dynamics of adaptation in real time.Until very recently, however, such studies have been limited by our inability to systematically find mutations in evolved organisms.We overcome this limitation by using a variety of DNA microarray-based techniques to characterize genetic changes, including point mutations, structural changes, and insertion variation, that resulted from the experimental adaptation of 24 haploid and diploid cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to growth in glucose-, sulfate, or phosphate-limited chemostats for ~ 200 generations.We identified frequent genomic amplifications and rearrangements as well as novel retrotransposition events associated with adaptation.Global mutation detection in 10 clonal isolates identified 32 point mutations