Fig. 5: Trait combination and improvement by adaptive laboratory evolution.

a Box plots for the individual evolved colonies isolated from YPX or YPD plates after ALE and their synthetic hybrid ancestors. Kinetic parameters were tested in 3 ml YPX on a rotating culture wheel, identically to how they were evolved for 80 generations. The average values (n = 6) of maximum specific growth rates (µ, defined as (ln(OD2)−ln(OD1))/(T2−T1)) for the S. cerevisiae reference strain (black line, yHRW135 was derived from yHRW134 by plasmid loss), ancestor six-species hybrids (purple dots), and evolved six-species hybrids (brown dots) are shown (Supplementary Data 5). Different shapes indicate the media in which the synthetic six-species hybrids were evolved. Additional kinetic parameters from microtiter plate experiments performed on evolved populations are shown in Supplementary Fig. 6 and Supplementary Data 6. Median values are represented by a horizontal line inside the box, and the upper and lower whiskers represent the highest and lowest values of the 1.5 ×  IQR (interquartile range), respectively. b Spot tests for three temperatures (22, 10, and 4 °C) are displayed for the evolved strains and the S. cerevisiae reference strain yHRW135. Evolved six-species hybrids retained the ability to grow at 4 °C, a trait not possessed by S. cerevisiae, despite the fact that it was not selected during ALE. Source data are provided at http://bit.ly/2v1rq1T.