Delphine Sicard
Researcher and teacher at the University of Paris-SudUniversity Paris Sud
Ferme du Moulon
Gif sur Yvette, 91190
France
Website
Abstracts (first author)
Linking protein structure and trade-off between life-history traits
Summary:
Metabolic pathways implicated in external resource consumption are expected to have an essential role in the evolution of life-history traits. Two extreme life-history trait strategies related to different resource exploitation strategies have been described in the yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae : The "grasshoppers" have a high specific glucose consumption rate in fermentation, a large cell size but a low reproduction rate and carrying capacity, while the "ants" have a low specific glucose consumption rate, a small cell size and a high reproduction rate and carrying capacity (Spor et al. 2008, 2009). We have explored the genetic and metabolic bases of « ant » and « grasshopper » life-history strategies. Using mutant analysis, we have shown that variation of expression of glycolytic encoding genes allow moving on the continum between these two extreme life-history strategies (Wang et al. 2011). Using proteomics appoaches we have revealed that not only glycolytic gene expression is involved in the control of yeast life-history strategies but also post-traductionnel modification of specific glycolytic enzymes (Albertin et al. 2013). Finally using experimental evolution, we have found that the evolution towards « ant » or « grashopper » strategies can be explained partly by mutations in a highly pleiotropic gene involved in a hub of more than 200 protein interaction network. This gene is recurrently mutated in the laboratory evolution. The location of the mutations in the gene, and thus in the protein, changes the effect of the mutation on several traits. Altogether, our data highlight the role of both variation in gene expression and also protein structure in the trade-off between life-history traits.