Characterization of mutational robustness in yeast

Biological systems are remarkably robust against both genetic and environmental perturbations. How organisms persist during environmental changes have been studied extensively. However, the resistance of organisms to genetic changes and particularly mutations, a property known as mutational robustness, is poorly understood. Several mechanisms have been proposed to be a source of mutational robustness. However, current studies investigating a potential role in robustness only focused on a few genes. For example, the Hsp90 chaperone in eukaryotes and GroEL in prokaryotes have been proposed to increase mutational robustness by enabling proteins to reach their native confirmation despite mutations. In order to fully understand how robustness is established within cells, I will examine new mutational robustness candidate genes using yeast. These were identified in a genomewide screen study performed in the lab of Prof. Kevin Verstrepen. I will be studying their potential role and the different mechanisms through which they increase mutational robustness. I will apply state-of-the-art high-throughput methods, mutation accumulation experiments, fitness assays and phenotyping in order to characterize different mechanisms that provide robustness. A better understanding of mutational robustness and it is mechanisms is very important, because it will have a large scale implications in many fields such as molecular biology and evolution.