title: Interactions between stressful environment and gene deletions alleviate the expected average loss of fitness in yeast.
abstract: The conjecture that the deleterious effects of mutations are amplified by stress or interaction with one another remains unsatisfactorily tested. It is now possible to reapproach this problem systematically by using genomic collections of mutants and applying stress-inducing conditions with a well-recognized impact on metabolism. We measured the maximum growth rate of single- and double-gene deletion strains of yeast in several stress-inducing treatments, including poor nutrients, elevated temperature, high salinity, and the addition of caffeine. The negative impact of deletions on the maximum growth rate was relatively smaller in stressful than in favorable conditions. In both benign and harsh environments, double-deletion strains grew on average slightly faster than expected from a multiplicative model of interaction between single growth effects, indicating positive epistasis for the rate of growth. This translates to even higher positive epistasis for fitness defined as the number of progeny. We conclude that the negative impact of metabolic disturbances, regardless of whether they are of environmental or genetic origin, is absolutely and relatively highest when growth is fastest. The effect of further damages tends to be weaker. This results in an average alleviating effect of interactions between stressful environment and gene deletions and among gene deletions.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Environmental Sciences, Jagiellonian University, 30387 Krakow, Poland.
authors.forename: Lukasz
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jasnos
authors.forename: Katarzyna
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tomala
authors.forename: Dorota
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Paczesniak
authors.forename: Ryszard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Korona
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D004777:Environment; D004843:Epistasis, Genetic; D017353:Gene Deletion; D005800:Genes, Fungal; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development*