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Genetic incompatibility dampens hybrid fertility more than hybrid viability: yeast as a case study.

ABSTRACT: Genetic incompatibility is believed to be the major cause of postzygotic reproductive isolation. Despite huge efforts seeking for speciation-related incompatibilities in the past several decades, a general understanding of how genetic incompatibility evolves in affecting hybrid fitness is not available, primarily due to the fact that the number of known incompatibilities is small. Instead of further mapping specific incompatible genes, in this paper we aimed to know the overall effects of incompatibility on fertility and viability, the two aspects of fitness, by examining 89 gametes produced by yeast S. cerevisiae-S. paradoxus F1 hybrids. Homozygous F2 hybrids formed by autodiploidization of F1 gametes were subject to tests for growth rate and sporulation efficiency. We observed much stronger defects in sporulation than in clonal growth for every single F2 hybrid strain, indicating that genetic incompatibility affects hybrid fertility more than hybrid viability in yeast. We related this finding in part to the fast-evolving nature of meiosis-related genes, and proposed that the generally low expression levels of these genes might be a cause of the observation.

SUBMITTER: Xu M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3071822 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Genetic incompatibility dampens hybrid fertility more than hybrid viability: yeast as a case study.

Xu Meibo M He Xionglei X

PloS one 20110406 4

Genetic incompatibility is believed to be the major cause of postzygotic reproductive isolation. Despite huge efforts seeking for speciation-related incompatibilities in the past several decades, a general understanding of how genetic incompatibility evolves in affecting hybrid fitness is not available, primarily due to the fact that the number of known incompatibilities is small. Instead of further mapping specific incompatible genes, in this paper we aimed to know the overall effects of incomp ...[more]

PMID: 21494679

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Project description:Species barriers, expressed as hybrid inviability and sterility, are often due to epistatic interactions between divergent loci from two lineages. Theoretical models indicate that the strength, direction, and complexity of these genetic interactions can strongly affect the expression of interspecific reproductive isolation and the rates at which new species evolve. Nonetheless, empirical analyses have not quantified the frequency with which loci are involved in interactions affecting hybrid fitness, and whether these loci predominantly interact synergistically or antagonistically, or preferentially involve loci that have strong individual effects on hybrid fitness. We systematically examined the prevalence of interactions between pairs of short chromosomal regions from one species (Solanum habrochaites) co-introgressed into a heterospecific genetic background (Solanum lycopersicum), using lines containing pairwise combinations of 15 chromosomal segments from S. habrochaites in the background of S. lycopersicum (i.e., 95 double introgression lines). We compared the strength of hybrid incompatibility (either pollen sterility or seed sterility) expressed in each double introgression line to the expected additive effect of its two component single introgressions. We found that epistasis was common among co-introgressed regions. Interactions for hybrid dysfunction were substantially more prevalent in pollen fertility compared to seed fertility phenotypes, and were overwhelmingly antagonistic (i.e., double hybrids were less unfit than expected from additive single introgression effects). This pervasive antagonism is expected to attenuate the rate at which hybrid infertility accumulates among lineages over time (i.e., giving diminishing returns as more reproductive isolation loci accumulate), as well as decouple patterns of accumulation of sterility loci and hybrid incompatibility phenotypes. This decoupling effect might explain observed differences between pollen and seed fertility in their fit to theoretical predictions of the accumulation of isolation loci, including the 'snowball' effect.

Dataset Information

Genetic incompatibility dampens hybrid fertility more than hybrid viability: yeast as a case study.

Publications

Genetic incompatibility dampens hybrid fertility more than hybrid viability: yeast as a case study.

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