Genetic load of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae under diverse environmental conditions

Fitness effect of spontaneous mutations accumulated in mismatch-repair deficient strains of yeast was estimated by measuring their maximum growth rate. Several environments with different energetic substrates, nutritional conditions, and temperature were tested. Genetic load of haploid strains was about 20-30% under most of these conditions. Because such a pronounced effect was caused by relatively small lesions (point mutations) affecting probably less than 1% of genes, resistance of the yeast genome to DNA damage appears to be rather limited. Fitness transitions among environments were orderly, in the sense that some strains tended to be more or less fit than others in all circumstances. One of the environments (an extremely high temperature, 38 degrees C) was stressful to the strains that accumulated mutations, as some of them stopped to grow, whereas the mutation-free strains were only moderately affected. These results imply that the impact of random point mutations is substantial and generally not dependent on a particular environment. Under stressful conditions, however, natural selection may be especially effective in purging mutations that, if commonly met, could slow down the rate of mutation accumulation.