Unlabelled: Bacteria with functional DNA repair systems are expected to have low mutation rates due to strong natural selection for genomic stability. However, our study of the wild-type D39, a pathogen responsible for many common diseases, revealed a high spontaneous mutation rate of 0.02 per genome per cell division in mutation-accumulation (MA) lines.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMar Life Sci Technol
November 2023
Unlabelled: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria severely threaten human health. Besides spontaneous mutations generated by endogenous factors, the resistance might also originate from mutations induced by certain antibiotics, such as the fluoroquinolones. Such antibiotics increase the genome-wide mutation rate by introducing replication errors from the SOS response pathway or decreasing the efficiency of the DNA repair systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBecause errors at the DNA level power pathogen evolution, a systematic understanding of the rate and molecular spectra of mutations could guide the avoidance and treatment of infectious diseases. We thus accumulated tens of thousands of spontaneous mutations in 768 repeatedly bottlenecked lineages of 18 strains from various geographical sites, temporal spread, and genetic backgrounds. Entailing over ∼1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMutations induced by pollutants may promote pathogen evolution, for example by accelerating mutations conferring antibiotic resistance. Generally, evaluating the genome-wide mutagenic effects of long-term sublethal pollutant exposure at single-nucleotide resolution is extremely difficult. To overcome this technical barrier, we use the mutation accumulation/whole-genome sequencing (MA/WGS) method as a mutagenicity test, to quantitatively evaluate genome-wide mutagenesis of after long-term exposure to a wide gradient of the glyphosate-based herbicide (GBH) Roundup Concentrate Plus.
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