RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The hidden complexity of Mendelian traits across yeast natural populations
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 039693
DO 10.1101/039693
A1 Jing Hou
A1 Anastasie Sigwalt
A1 David Pflieger
A1 Jackson Peter
A1 Jacky de Montigny
A1 Maitreya Dunham
A1 Joseph Schacherer
YR 2016
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/02/15/039693.abstract
AB Mendelian traits are considered as the lower end of the complexity spectrum of heritable phenotypes. However, more than a century after the rediscovery of Mendel’s law, the global landscape of monogenic variants as well as their effects and inheritance patterns within natural populations is still not well understood. Using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we performed a species-wide survey of Mendelian traits across a large population of isolates. We generated offspring from 41 unique parental pairs, and analyzed 1,105 cross/trait combinations. We found that 8.9% of the cases were Mendelian. Most were caused by common variants showing stable inheritances in a natural population. However, we also found that a rare monogenic variant related to drug resistance displayed a significant and variable expressivity across different genetic backgrounds, leading to modified inheritances ranging from intermediate to high complexities. Our results illustrate for the first time the continuum of the hidden complexity of a monogenic mutation, where genotype is hardly predictive of phenotype.