Data from: An adaptive biomolecular condensation response is conserved across environmentally divergent species

Cells must sense and respond to sudden maladaptive environmental changes—stresses—to survive and thrive. Across eukaryotes, stresses such as heat shock trigger conserved responses: growth arrest, a specific transcriptional response, and biomolecular condensation of protein and mRNA into structures known as stress granules under severe stress. The composition, formation mechanism, adaptive significance, and even evolutionary conservation of these condensed structures remain enigmatic. Here we provide an unprecedented view into stress-triggered condensation, its evolutionary conservation and tuning, and its integration into other well-studied aspects of the stress response. Using three morphologically near-identical budding yeast species adapted to different thermal environments and diverged by up to 100 million years, we show that proteome-scale biomolecular condensation is tuned to species-specific thermal niches, closely tracking corresponding growth and transcriptional responses. In each species, poly(A)-binding protein—a core marker of stress granules—condenses in isolation at species-specific temperatures, with conserved molecular features and conformational changes modulating condensation. From the ecological to the molecular scale, our results reveal previously unappreciated levels of evolutionary selection in the eukaryotic stress response, while establishing a rich, tractable system for further inquiry.Seven folders contain raw and processed data as well as R or Python scripts to produce the figures in the paper.Funding provided by: National Institute of General Medical SciencesCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000057Award Number: GM144278Funding provided by: National Institute of General Medical SciencesCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000057Award Number: GM127406Funding provided by: National Institute of General Medical SciencesCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000057Award Number: R01 GM055694Funding provided by: National Institute of General Medical SciencesCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000057Award Number: R35 GM14833Funding provided by: National Institute of General Medical SciencesCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000057Award Number: T32 GM007197-43Funding provided by: National Institute of Environmental Health SciencesCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000066Award Number: F31 ES032337-Funding provided by: Helen Hay Whitney FoundationCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100005237Award Number