How changing environments can preserve an ancient microbial survival strategy

A research group led by Tetsuhiro Hatakeyama from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at the Institute of Science Tokyo has revealed how a seemingly self-destructive survival strategy could persist in yeast for hundreds of millions of years. By combining population dynamics theory with comparative experimental observations, the team found that alternating periods of nutrient-rich conditions and starvation can stabilize this unusual behavior over evolutionary timescales. The findings were published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.