Pattern may be used in forensics to help determine where a
particular bacterial strain originates
Biologists and informaticists at Indiana University have
produced one of the most extensive pictures ever of mutation processes in the
DNA sequence of an organism, elucidating important new evolutionary information
about the molecular nature of mutations and how fast those heritable changes occur.
By analyzing the exact genomic changes in the model
prokaryote Escherichia coli that had undergone over 200,000 generations of
growth in the absence of natural selective pressures, the team led by IU College
of Arts and Sciences Department of Biology professor Patricia L. Foster found
that spontaneous mutation rates in E. coli DNA were actually three times lower
than previously thought.