Evidence that mutation is universally biased towards AT in bacteria.

ABSTRACT: Mutation is the engine that drives evolution and adaptation forward in that it generates the variation on which natural selection acts. Mutation is a random process that nevertheless occurs according to certain biases. Elucidating mutational biases and the way they vary across species and within genomes is crucial to understanding evolution and adaptation. Here we demonstrate that clonal pathogens that evolve under severely relaxed selection are uniquely suitable for studying mutational biases in bacteria. We estimate mutational patterns using sequence datasets from five such clonal pathogens belonging to four diverse bacterial clades that span most of the range of genomic nucleotide content. We demonstrate that across different types of sites and in all four clades mutation is consistentl

SUBMITTER: Hershberg R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2936535 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature