Known mutator alleles do not markedly increase mutation rate in clinical Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains.

ABSTRACT: Natural selection has the potential to act on all phenotypes, including genomic mutation rate. Classic evolutionary theory predicts that in asexual populations, mutator alleles, which cause high mutation rates, can fix due to linkage with beneficial mutations. This phenomenon has been demonstrated experimentally and may explain the frequency of mutators found in bacterial pathogens. By contrast, in sexual populations, recombination decouples mutator alleles from beneficial mutations, preventing mutator fixation. In the facultatively sexual yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, segregating alleles of MLH1 and PMS1 have been shown to be incompatible, causing a high mutation rate when combined. These alleles had never been found together naturally, but were recently discovered in a cluster of clini

SUBMITTER: Skelly DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5394658 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature