A Comparison of Methods to Measure Fitness in Escherichia coli.

ABSTRACT: In order to characterize the dynamics of adaptation, it is important to be able to quantify how a population's mean fitness changes over time. Such measurements are especially important in experimental studies of evolution using microbes. The Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE) with Escherichia coli provides one such system in which mean fitness has been measured by competing derived and ancestral populations. The traditional method used to measure fitness in the LTEE and many similar experiments, though, is subject to a potential limitation. As the relative fitness of the two competitors diverges, the measurement error increases because the less-fit population becomes increasingly small and cannot be enumerated as precisely. Here, we present and employ two alternatives to the traditiona

SUBMITTER: Wiser MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4427439 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature