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Section: New Results

Introgressions as a source of diversity

Several prominent mechanisms of genomic evolution have been described for the yeasts, among them interspecific hybridization, reticulated evolution, aneuploidization, recent or ancient poly-ploidization events, large chromosomal duplication or more limited gene duplication, and horizontal transfer. These mechanisms are usually so closely intertwined that it is difficult to determine which ones are causes or consequences. Regardless of mechanisms the result has been a drastic reshaping of yeasts genome along evolution. Understanding these mechanisms is important, not only for strain construction in biotechnology, but also more fundamentally for insight into the causes and effects of genome reshaping on much shorter time scales.

Introgression, the transfer of large or more limited genetic information from one species to another, is an evolutionary mechanism of particular interest in industrial applications such as wine making where large vat cultures are used. Introgression results in mosaic genomes, and can be the result of interspecific hybridization fol- lowed by the extensive loss of one parental genome, either through repeated backcross with one parental species or through missegregation of the hybrid at meiosis.

In collaboration with the Institut des Science de la Vigne et du Vin and Bordeaux Sciences Agro, Pleiade developed tools to rapidly assess the presence of introgressed regions in a large population of Saccharomyces uvarum isolates (104 strains), focusing on Holarctic isolates from natural, cider and wine environments since introgressed regions are absent in Southern hemisphere isolates. The overall number of introgressed regions is significantly higher in cider-associated strains compared to wild strains, and is higher in wine isolates. However, only a subset of the introgressed regions were found to be overrepresented in anthropic activities and their number and quality varied between cider- and wine-making processes.

Paradoxically, the low Holarctic genetic diversity observed in [1] contrasts with the relative high phenotypic diversity found for technological traits. This contradiction suggests that interspecific introgressions found among Holarctic S. uvarum strains could be the most important source of genetic, and by extention of phenotypic, diversity.