AI Article Synopsis
- Mutations were once thought to occur randomly and uniformly across genomes, but recent findings show that they can be highly regulated and driven by environmental stress.
- This regulated mutagenesis allows organisms to adapt more quickly during stressful conditions by targeting specific genomic areas, leading to multiple mutations in clusters.
- These discoveries could change how we understand evolution and provide new approaches for tackling cancer, infectious diseases, and other evolutionary processes.
Article Abstract
Mutations drive evolution and were assumed to occur by chance: constantly, gradually, roughly uniformly in genomes, and without regard to environmental inputs, but this view is being revised by discoveries of molecular mechanisms of mutation in bacteria, now translated across the tree of life. These mechanisms reveal a picture of highly regulated mutagenesis, up-regulated temporally by stress responses and activated when cells/organisms are maladapted to their environments-when stressed-potentially accelerating adaptation. Mutation is also nonrandom in genomic space, with multiple simultaneous mutations falling in local clusters, which may allow concerted evolution-the multiple changes needed to adapt protein functions and protein machines encoded by linked genes. Molecular mechanisms of stress-inducible mutation change ideas about evolution and suggest different ways to model and address cancer development, infectious disease, and evolution generally.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6443146 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007995 | DOI Listing |
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