Physiological architecture and evolutionary origins of cellular adaptability

The capacity to adapt to complex environments ('adaptability') is a defining property of cells. Yet, its relationship across single-cell physiology, population-level responses, and evolutionary timescales remains unclear. We performed single-cell transcriptional profiling of budding yeast across 20 complex environments before and after long-term selection for increased osmotolerance. In ancestral populations, transcriptional responses organized into a reproducible hierarchy where adaptation to certain cues took precedence over others. This hierarchy mechanistically originated within individual cells through contingent regulation of translation initiation. Evolution for >3,000 generations under osmotic stress increased osmotolerance while reordering this hierarchy, selectively deprioritizing osmotic stress as an organizing axis of adaptation. The derived strain exhibited impaired integration of stress responses, defective translational coordination, and reduced fitness outside the selected condition. Together, these findings illustrate that cellular adaptability is an evolved architecture whose form is set by the history of selection.