Multicellularity and virulence in the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae

In a worldwide panel of ~1000 Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolates, ~2/3 expressed at least one multicellular trait, and hyper-multicellular isolates were linked to higher virulence.

• Why it matters: Natural variation in yeast multicellular, biofilm-related traits is poorly characterized, limiting understanding of how ecology, evolution, and aggregation relate to pathogenic potential.
• What they did: The study measured five multicellular phenotypes across ~1000 isolates, tested hyper-multicellular isolates against wax moth larvae, and ran genome-wide association analyses per trait.
• The result: Clinical isolates showed increased levels of three biofilm-related traits, and genome-wide signals suggested many small-effect loci; MLP2 and ECM9 deletions verified associations with multicellularity.