The properties of spontaneous mutations in the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Natural genetic variation ultimately arises from the process of mutation. Knowledge of how the raw material for evolution is produced is necessary for a full understanding of several fundamental evolutionary concepts. We performed a mutation accumulation experiment with wild-type and mismatch-repair deficient, mutator lines of the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and used whole-genome sequencing to reveal the genome-wide rate, spectrum, distribution, leading/lagging bias, and context-dependency of spontaneous mutations.

Results

Wild-type base-pair mutation and indel rates were ~10(-10) and ~10(-11) per nucleotide per generation, respectively, and deficiencies in the mismatch-repair system caused rates to increase by over two orders of magnitude. A univ

SUBMITTER: Dettman JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4702332 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature