Comparative analysis of mutational robustness of the intrinsically disordered viral protein VPg and of its interactor eIF4E - Fig 3

Comparative mutational robustness of VPg (dark grey) and eIF4E (light gray). Box plots display of the dispersion of remaining functional variants of VPg (dark grey) and eIF4 (light gray) within the low, med and high libraries. Yeasts transformed with “low”, “medium” and “high” libraries of variants were matted with yeasts transformed with the wild type partner encoding gene. The resulting diploid yeasts containing the genes of both protein partners were selected on a non-interaction selective medium (-LW). The corresponding number of colonies, τ, represented the whole population of variants. Yeast colonies able to grow on stringent interaction selecting medium (-LWHA) were counted on 3 to 5 independent plates (Three independent panning). The corresponding number, σ, was divided by τ. ρ = σ /τ refers to the rate of remaining functional variants within the mutants libraries relative to the starting whole population of variants. ρ is indicative of the mutational robustness of the protein considered. (See Material and Methods for more details). (t-test p-value ρ = EXP(-k*n) with n, the averaged mutation number per protein. Best fit: k = 0.274±0.011 (VPg black line) and k = 0.412±0.016 (eIF4E gray line).