Per aspera ad astra: When harmful chromosomal translocations become a plus value in genetic evolution. Lessons from Saccharomyces cerevisiae

August 20, 2015

This review will focus on chromosomal translocations (either spontaneous or induced) in budding yeast. Indeed, very few organisms tolerate so well aneuploidy like Saccharomyces, allowing in depth studies on chromosomal numerical aberrations. The phenomenon of post-translocational adaptation (PTA) is discussed, providing some new unpublished data and proposing the hypothesis that translocations may drive evolution through adaptive genetic selection.