Standing Genetic Diversity and Transmission Bottleneck Size Drive Adaptation in Bacteriophage Qβ.

ABSTRACT: A critical issue to understanding how populations adapt to new selective pressures is the relative contribution of the initial standing genetic diversity versus that generated de novo. RNA viruses are an excellent model to study this question, as they form highly heterogeneous populations whose genetic diversity can be modulated by factors such as the number of generations, the size of population bottlenecks, or exposure to new environment conditions. In this work, we propagated at nonoptimal temperature (43 °C) two bacteriophage Qβ populations differing in their degree of heterogeneity. Deep sequencing analysis showed that, prior to the temperature change, the most heterogeneous population contained some low-frequency mutations that had previously been detected in the consensus sequences

SUBMITTER: Somovilla P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9408265 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature