DOI: 10.1126/science.1087911. High Deleterious Genomic Mutation Rate in Stationary Phase of <i>Escherichia coli</i>

High Deleterious Genomic Mutation Rate in Stationary Phase of Escherichia coli

10.1126/science.1087911

Crossref journal-article

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Science (221)

Abstract

In natural habitats, bacteria spend most of their time in some form of growth arrest. Little is known about deleterious mutations in such stages, and consequently there is limited understanding of what evolutionary events occur. In a deleterious mutation accumulation experiment in prolonged stationary phase of Escherichia coli , about 0.03 slightly deleterious mutations were observed per genome per day. This is over an order of magnitude higher than extrapolations from fast-growing cells, but in line with inferences from observations in adaptive stationary phase mutation experiments. These findings may affect understanding of bacterial evolution and the emergence of bacterial pathogenicity.

Bibliography

Loewe, L., Textor, V., & Scherer, S. (2003). High Deleterious Genomic Mutation Rate in Stationary Phase of Escherichia coli. Science, 302(5650), 1558â1560.

Authors 3

Laurence Loewe (first)
Volker Textor (additional)
Siegfried Scherer (additional)

References 34 Referenced 71

10.1093/genetics/50.1.1
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R. Y. Morita Bacteria in Oligotrophic Environments: Starvation-Survival Lifestyle (Chapman & Hall New York 1997).
S. E. Finkel, E. R. Zinser, R. Kolter, in Bacterial Stress Responses, G. Storz, R. Hengge-Aronis, Eds. (ASM Press, Washington, DC, 2000), pp. 231–238. / Bacterial Stress Responses (2000)
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10.1093/genetics/148.4.1559
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10.1046/j.1462-2920.2003.00488.x
10.1093/genetics/164.1.13
10.1126/science.1086802
We thank E. Lang-Halter for excellent technical assistance J. Blanchard and M. Lynch for providing the strain used in this study (and the NIH for the grant to M.L. that allowed J.B. to obtain the strain) P. Keightley for providing the code for ML analysis (with explanations on how to use it) and B. Charlesworth and two anonymous referees for significantly improving this manuscript.

Dates

Type	When
Created	21 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 28, 2003, 10:38 a.m.)
Deposited	1 year, 7 months ago (Jan. 9, 2024, 9:31 p.m.)
Indexed	2 days, 1 hour ago (Sept. 4, 2025, 9:53 a.m.)
Issued	21 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 28, 2003)
Published	21 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 28, 2003)
Published Print	21 years, 9 months ago (Nov. 28, 2003)

Funders 0

None

BibTeX

@article{Loewe_2003, title={High Deleterious Genomic Mutation Rate in Stationary Phase of Escherichia coli}, volume={302}, ISSN={1095-9203}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1087911}, DOI={10.1126/science.1087911}, number={5650}, journal={Science}, publisher={American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)}, author={Loewe, Laurence and Textor, Volker and Scherer, Siegfried}, year={2003}, month=nov, pages={1558–1560} }

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