Article Stress-response balance drives the evolution of a network module and its host genome

Stress response genes and their regulators form networks that underlie drug resistance. These networks often have an inherent tradeoff: their expression is costly in the absence of stress, but beneficial in stress. They can quickly emerge in the genomes of infectious microbes and cancer cells, protecting them from treat-ment. Yet, the evolution of stress resistance networks is not well understood. Here, we use a two-component synthetic gene circuit integrated into the budding yeast genome to model experimentally the adaptation of a stress response module and its host genome in three different scenarios. In agreement with computational predic-tions, we find that: (i) intra-module mutations target and elimi-nate the module if it confers only cost without any benefit to the cell; (ii) intra- and extra-module mutations jointly activate the module if it is potentially beneficial and confers no cost; and (iii) a few specific mutations repeatedly fine-tune the module’s noisy response if it has excessive costs and/or insufficient benefits. Over-all, these findings reveal how the timing and mechanisms of stress response network evolution depend on the environment