title: The Hidden Complexity of Mendelian Traits across Natural Yeast Populations.
abstract: Mendelian traits are considered to be at the lower end of the complexity spectrum of heritable phenotypes. However, more than a century after the rediscovery of Mendel's law, the global landscape of monogenic variants, as well as their effects and inheritance patterns within natural populations, is still not well understood. Using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we performed a species-wide survey of Mendelian traits across a large population of isolates. We generated offspring from 41 unique parental pairs and analyzed 1,105 cross/trait combinations. We found that 8.9% of the cases were Mendelian. Further tracing of causal variants revealed background-specific expressivity and modified inheritances, gradually transitioning from Mendelian to complex traits in 30% of the cases. In fact, when taking into account the natural population diversity, the hidden complexity of traits could be substantial, confounding phenotypic predictability even for simple Mendelian traits.
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Genomics and Microbiology, University of Strasbourg/CNRS UMR 7156, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Genomics and Microbiology, University of Strasbourg/CNRS UMR 7156, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: Anastasie
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sigwalt
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Genomics and Microbiology, University of Strasbourg/CNRS UMR 7156, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: Téo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Fournier
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Genomics and Microbiology, University of Strasbourg/CNRS UMR 7156, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pflieger
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Genomics and Microbiology, University of Strasbourg/CNRS UMR 7156, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: Jackson
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Peter
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Genomics and Microbiology, University of Strasbourg/CNRS UMR 7156, 67000 Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: Jacky
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: de Montigny
authors.affiliation: Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
authors.forename: Maitreya J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Dunham
authors.affiliation: Department of Genetics, Genomics and Microbiology, University of Strasbourg/CNRS UMR 7156, 67000 Strasbourg, France. Electronic address: schacherer@unistra.fr.
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Schacherer
mesh_terms: D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics*; D010641:Phenotype; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci / Q000235:genetics*; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics*