QUOTE: ...Lidia Perfeito, Isabel Gordo and colleagues from the Institute Gulbenkian of Science in Lisbon, Portugal... measured the mutation rate of Escherichia coli in many different sized populations, including some small enough to avoid clonal interference although big enough to avoid disadvantageous mutations to spread too easily and kill the population.
Through the comparison of these different size populations, which ranged from to 20,000 cells to 10 million, Perfeito, Gordo and colleagues reached an amazing conclusion: that Escherichia coli mutation rate was a thousand times bigger than previously predicted and that thousand of mutations were going overseen because “better�?ones overtook them in the population...
The importance of Perfeito, Gordo and colleagues�?results resides in two facts: first the fact that they show that beneficial mutations in bacteria are much more common than previously predicted suggesting that bacteria can adapt both to anti-bacterial medication, but also to their host, much quicker than previously thought and second the fact many more bacterial genes are mutating than those seen in the population what can have implications for the way evolution is understood... UNQUOTE.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070818112338.htm |
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