Single Nucleotide Mapping of the Locally Accessible Trait Space in Yeast Reveals Pareto Fronts that Constrain Initial Adaptation

Abstract

Tradeoffs constrain the improvement of performance of multiple traits simultaneously. Such tradeoffs define Pareto fronts, which represent a set of optimal individuals that cannot be improved in any one trait without reducing performance in another. Surprisingly, experimental evolution often yields genotypes with improved performance in all measured traits, perhaps indicating an absence of tradeoffs at least in the short-term. Here we densely sample adaptive mutations in S. cerevisiae to ask whether first-step adaptive mutations result in tradeoffs during the growth cycle. We isolated thousands of adaptive clones evolved under carefully chosen conditions and quantified their performances in each part of the growth cycle. We too find that some first-step adaptive mutations can improve all traits to a modest extent. However, our dense sampling allowed us to identify tradeoffs and establish the existence of Pareto fronts between fermentation and respiration, and between respiration and stationary phases. Moreover, we establish that no single mutation in the ancestral genome can circumvent the detected tradeoffs. Finally, we sequenced hundreds of these adaptive clones, revealing novel targets of adaptation and defining the genetic basis of the identified tradeoffs.