Genetic basis of evolutionary adaptation by Escherichia coli to stressful cycles of freezing, thawing and growth.

ABSTRACT: Microbial evolution experiments offer a powerful approach for coupling changes in complex phenotypes, including fitness and its components, with specific mutations. Here we investigate mutations substituted in 15 lines of Escherichia coli that evolved for 1000 generations under freeze-thaw-growth (FTG) conditions. To investigate the genetic basis of their improvements, we screened many of the lines for mutations involving insertion sequence (IS) elements and identified two genes where multiple lines had similar mutations. Three lines had IS150 insertions in cls, which encodes cardiolipin synthase, and 8 lines had IS150 insertions in the uspA-uspB intergenic region, encoding two universal stress proteins. Another line had an 11-bp deletion mutation in the cls gene. Strain reconstructions an

SUBMITTER: Sleight SC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2535694 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature