High-resolution yeast phenomics resolves different physiological features in the saline response

We present a methodology for gene functional prediction based on extraction of physiologically relevant growth variables from all viable haploid yeast knockout mutants. This quantitative phenomics approach, here applied to saline cultivation, identified marginal but functionally important phenotypes and allowed the precise determination of time to adapt to an environmental challenge, rate of growth, and efficiency of growth. We identified approximately 500 salt-sensitive gene deletions, the majority of which were previously uncharacterized and displayed salt sensitivity for only one of the three physiological features. We also report a high correlation to protein-protein interaction data; in particular, several salt-sensitive subcellular networks indicating functional modules were revealed. In contrast, no correlation was found between gene dispensability and gene expression. It is proposed that high-resolution phenomics will be instrumental in systemwide descriptions of intragenomic functional networks.