Publications by authors named "C T Hittinger"
Article Synopsis
- Functional innovation at the protein level plays a significant role in evolution, with specific constraints depending on each protein's unique history and structure.
- The study focuses on a recent functional innovation in an α-glucoside transporter from the yeast Saccharomyces eubayanus, revealing that novel substrate transport requires complex interactions among various protein regions.
- By analyzing genome data from 332 Saccharomycotina yeast species, the research suggests that these α-glucoside transporters evolved from a multifunctional ancestor and underwent subfunctionalization, making the acquisition of new functions challenging but possible through specific genetic changes.
Although implicated as deleterious in many organisms, aneuploidy can underlie rapid phenotypic evolution. However, aneuploidy will be maintained only if the benefit outweighs the cost, which remains incompletely understood. To quantify this cost and the molecular determinants behind it, we generated a panel of chromosome duplications in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and applied comparative modeling and molecular validation to understand aneuploidy toxicity.
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- Distantly related organisms, like cactophilic yeasts, can evolve similar traits and lifestyles to survive in comparable environments, with this study analyzing over 1,000 yeast species to understand their convergent evolution.
- Researchers found that cactophily (association with cacti) evolved independently about 17 times and could be predicted with 76% accuracy using genomic and phenotypic data, with thermotolerance being the most significant factor.
- The study also revealed horizontal gene transfer and duplications in genes related to plant cell wall degradation, indicating that these adaptive traits arose from different molecular pathways, and highlighted a potential link between cactophilic lifestyles and yeast becoming human pathogens.
Yeasts in the subphylum Saccharomycotina are found across the globe in disparate ecosystems. A major aim of yeast research is to understand the diversity and evolution of ecological traits, such as carbon metabolic breadth, insect association, and cactophily. This includes studying aspects of ecological traits like genetic architecture or association with other phenotypic traits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCodon usage bias, or the unequal use of synonymous codons, is observed across genes, genomes, and between species. It has been implicated in many cellular functions, such as translation dynamics and transcript stability, but can also be shaped by neutral forces. We characterized codon usage across 1,154 strains from 1,051 species from the fungal subphylum Saccharomycotina to gain insight into the biases, molecular mechanisms, evolution, and genomic features contributing to codon usage patterns.
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