Mutator genomes decay, despite sustained fitness gains, in a long-term experiment with bacteria.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the extreme variation among bacterial genomes remains an unsolved challenge in evolutionary biology, despite long-standing debate about the relative importance of natural selection, mutation, and random drift. A potentially important confounding factor is the variation in mutation rates between lineages and over evolutionary history, which has been documented in several species. Mutation accumulation experiments have shown that hypermutability can erode genomes over short timescales. These results, however, were obtained under conditions of extremely weak selection, casting doubt on their general relevance. Here, we circumvent this limitation by analyzing genomes from mutator populations that arose during a long-term experiment with Escherichia coli, in which populatio

SUBMITTER: Couce A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5664506 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature