Molecular Clock of Neutral Mutations in a Fitness-Increasing Evolutionary Process.

ABSTRACT: The molecular clock of neutral mutations, which represents linear mutation fixation over generations, is theoretically explained by genetic drift in fitness-steady evolution or hitchhiking in adaptive evolution. The present study is the first experimental demonstration for the molecular clock of neutral mutations in a fitness-increasing evolutionary process. The dynamics of genome mutation fixation in the thermal adaptive evolution of Escherichia coli were evaluated in a prolonged evolution experiment in duplicated lineages. The cells from the continuously fitness-increasing evolutionary process were subjected to genome sequencing and analyzed at both the population and single-colony levels. Although the dynamics of genome mutation fixation were complicated by the combination of the stocha

SUBMITTER: Kishimoto T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4503671 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature