Adaptation of Escherichia coli to Long-Term Serial Passage in Complex Medium: Evidence of Parallel Evolution

Abstract

With a growing body of work directed toward understanding the mechanisms of evolution using experimental systems, it is crucial to decipher what effects the experimental setup has on the outcome. If the goal of experimental laboratory evolution is to elucidate underlying evolutionary mechanisms and trends, these must be demonstrated in a variety of systems and environments. Here, we perform experimental evolution in a complex medium allowing the cells to transition through all five phases of growth, including death phase and long-term stationary phase. We show that the swiftness of selection and the specific targets of adaptive evolution are different in this system compared to others. We also observe parallel evolution where different mutations in the same genes are under positive natural selection. Together, these data show that while some outcomes of microbial evolution experiments may be generalizable, many outcomes will be environment or system specific.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Apr 21, 2017
Source ID
10.1128/msystems.00192-16

Entities

People

  • Christopher Geiger
  • Haixu Tang
  • Heewook Lee
  • Karin E Kram
  • Patricia L. Foster
  • Steven E. Finkel
  • Wazim Mohammed Ismail

Organizations

  • Army Research Office
  • California State University
  • Indiana University
  • University of Southern California

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Biology

Readers

  • Combustion science or combustion engineering.
  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology