Colloquium Series: Dr. David Pincus, University of Chicago
Colloquium Series
Dr. David Pincus, University of Chicago
Event Details
Monday, February 9, 2026
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Naylor Building, Room NL 6
Topic
Evolutionary origins of stress response prioritization and adaptability
Abstract
The capacity to adapt to environmental change (‘adaptability’) is a central property of living systems but is difficult to understand through reductionist approaches. Statistical analysis of yeast populations adapted to growth in 20 diverse environments profiled by single-cell transcriptomics revealed a hierarchical organization of adaptation in which responses to certain environmental features take precedence over others, deviating from the established model of a generic environmental stress response. This adaptive prioritization was mechanistically validated and shown to arise from differential regulation of translation initiation and ribosome biogenesis. Long-term laboratory evolution under constant stress for >5,000 generations collapsed this hierarchy, reduced adaptive capacity, and rewired stress-regulated translation. These results reveal that the hierarchical prioritization observed is contingent on the evolutionary past, motivating the idea that the architecture of adaptability is a reflection of the historical structure of selection and variation.