Diminishing-returns epistasis among random beneficial mutations in a multicellular fungus

Sijmen Schoustra*, Sungmin Hwang, Joachim Krug, Arjan de Visser

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

38 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Adaptive evolution ultimately is fuelled by mutations generating novel genetic variation. Non-additivity of fitness effects of mutations (called epistasis) may affect the dynamics and repeatability of adaptation. However, understanding the importance and implications of epistasis is hampered by the observation of substantial variation in patterns of epistasis across empirical studies. Interestingly, some recent studies report increasingly smaller benefits of beneficial mutations once genotypes become better adapted (called diminishing-returns epistasis) in unicellular microbes and single genes. Here, we use Fisher’s geometric model (FGM) to generate analytical predictions about the relationship between the effect size of mutations and the extent of epistasis. We then test these predictions using the multicellular fungus Aspergillus nidulans by generating a collection of 108 strains in either a poor or a rich nutrient environment that each carry a beneficial mutation and constructing pairwise combinations using sexual crosses. Our results support the predictions from FGM and indicate negative epistasis among beneficial mutations in both environments, which scale with mutational effect size. Hence, our findings show the importance of diminishing-returns epistasis among beneficial mutations also for a multicellular organism, and suggest that this pattern reflects a generic constraint operating at diverse levels of biological organization.

Original languageEnglish
Article number20161376
Number of pages9
JournalProceedings of the Royal Society. B: Biological Sciences
Volume283
Issue number1837
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Adaptation
  • Aspergillus nidulans
  • Beneficial mutation
  • Epistasis
  • Fisher’s geometric model

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