Genomic signatures of adaptation to wine biological ageing conditions in biofilm‐forming flor yeasts

Abstract

The molecular and evolutionary processes underlying fungal domestication remain largely unknown despite the importance of fungi to bioindustry and for comparative adaptation genomics in eukaryotes. Wine fermentation and biological ageing are performed by strains of S. cerevisiae with, respectively, pelagic fermentative growth on glucose and biofilm aerobic growth utilizing ethanol. Here, we use environmental samples of wine and flor yeasts to investigate the genomic basis of yeast adaptation to contrasted anthropogenic environments. Phylogenetic inference and population structure analysis based on single nucleotide polymorphisms revealed a group of flor yeasts separated from wine yeasts. A combination of methods revealed several highly differentiated regions between wine and flor yeasts, and analyses using codon‐substitution models for detecting molecular adaptation identified sites under positive selection in the high‐affinity transporter gene ZRT 1 . The cross‐population composite likelihood ratio revealed selective sweeps at three regions, including in the hexose transporter gene HXT 7 , the yapsin gene YPS 6 and the membrane protein coding gene MTS 27 . Our analyses also revealed that the biological ageing environment has led to the accumulation of numerous mutations in proteins from several networks, including Flo11 regulation and divalent metal transport. Together, our findings suggest that the tuning of FLO 11 expression and zinc transport networks are a distinctive feature of the genetic changes underlying the domestication of flor yeasts. Our study highlights the multiplicity of genomic changes underlying yeast adaptation to man‐made habitats and reveals that flor/wine yeast lineage can serve as a useful model for studying the genomics of adaptive divergence.

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