Affiliations: 1) Department of Plant Biology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA; 2) Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Keywords: Phylogenetics, Macroevolution, and Biogeography
The model species, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is the workhorse for scientific research and biotechnology because of its tractability and short generation time. With advances in sequencing technology, genomes are paving the way to resolve the natural history of S. cerevisiae and other Saccharomyces species. The phylogeography of wild S. cerevisiae is challenging because this species has been heavily influenced by domestication, which increases dispersal and reduces geographic structure. To better understand the migrations of wild S. cerevisiae, we focused our study on S. cerevisiae isolates from woodlands. We asked: Do woodland populations show genetic substructure that is consistent with isolation by distance? We used over 300 publicly available whole-genome sequences to determine the population structure and phylogenetic relationships among woodland yeast. We were able to recapitulate known phylogenetic relationships of domesticated S. cerevisiae lineages and found that woodland populations from around the world are genetically distinct. This suggests that population structure of natural S. cerevisiae has not been drowned out by the effects of domestication. Strains from woodlands can therefore serve as good models for evolution and ecology, for example to assess local adaptation.