Mutations in yeast are deleterious on average regardless of the degree of adaptation to the testing environment

Abstract

The role of spontaneous mutations in evolution depends on the distribution of their effects on fitness. Despite a general consensus that new mutations are deleterious on average, a handful of mutation accumulation experiments in diverse organisms instead suggest that of beneficial and deleterious mutations can have comparable fitness impacts, i.e., the product of their respective rates and effects can be roughly equal. We currently lack a general framework for predicting when such a pattern will occur. One idea is that beneficial mutations will be more evident in genotypes that are not well adapted to the testing environment. We tested this prediction experimentally in the laboratory yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae by allowing nine replicate populations to adapt to novel environments with complex sets of stressors. After >1000 asexual generations interspersed with 41 rounds of sexual reproduction, we assessed the mean effect of induced mutations on yeast growth in both the environment to which they had been adapting and the alternative novel environment. The mutations were deleterious on average, with the severity depending on the testing environment. However, we find no evidence that the adaptive match between genotype and environment is predictive of mutational fitness effects.