Microbiology journal club: Mutation rate and population density скачать в хорошем качестве

Microbiology journal club: Mutation rate and population density

Mutation generates the raw material on which natural selection acts. The mutation rate of an organism reflects the balance between the occurrence of errors in DNA and the organism’s ability to repair these errors. In PLoS Biology this past August, a team of researchers in the UK investigated how population density affects the balance between error rate and repair, thereby influencing the mutation rate of an organism. In the paper, they describe a phenomenon called density-associated mutation-rate plasticity (DAMP), in which the mutation rate is inversely correlated with population density. They find this phenomenon in bacteria, eukaryotes and viruses, and they consider how DAMP might impact evolutionary trajectories. Link to the paper: http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...