Open AccessGenetics of Adaptation of the Ascomycetous Fungus Podospora anserina to Submerged Cultivation
Author(s) -
Olga Kudryavtseva,
Ksenia R. Safina,
Olga A. Vakhrusheva,
Maria D. Logacheva,
Aleksey Penin,
Tatiana V. Neretina,
Viktoria N Moskalenko,
Elena S. Glagoleva,
Georgii A. Bazykin,
Alexey S. Kondrashov
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
genome biology and evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.702
H-Index - 74
ISSN - 1759-6653
DOI - 10.1093/gbe/evz194
Subject(s) - podospora anserina , biology , adaptation (eye) , fungus , filamentous fungus , evolutionary biology , genetics , botany , gene , neuroscience , mutant
Podospora anserina is a model ascomycetous fungus which shows pronounced phenotypic senescence when grown on solid medium but possesses unlimited lifespan under submerged cultivation. In order to study the genetic aspects of adaptation of P. anserina to submerged cultivation, we initiated a long-term evolution experiment. In the course of the first 4 years of the experiment, 125 single-nucleotide substitutions and 23 short indels were fixed in eight independently evolving populations. Six proteins that affect fungal growth and development evolved in more than one population; in particular, in the G-protein alpha subunit FadA, new alleles fixed in seven out of eight experimental populations, and these fixations affected just four amino acid sites, which is an unprecedented level of parallelism in experimental evolution. Parallel evolution at the level of genes and pathways, an excess of nonsense and missense substitutions, and an elevated conservation of proteins and their sites where the changes occurred suggest that many of the observed fixations were adaptive and driven by positive selection.