Journal of Bacteriology, June 2001, p. 3737-3741, Vol. 183, No. 12
0021-9193/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JB.183.12.3737-3741.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095
Received 6 December 2000/Accepted 2 April 2001
Mutator cells that lack the mismatch repair system
(MMR
) occur at rates of 10
5 or less in
laboratory populations started from wild-type cells. We show that after
selection for recombinants in an interspecies mating between
Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium and
Escherichia coli, the percentage of MMR
cells
rises to several percent of the recombinant population, and after a
second successive mating and selection, greater than 95% of the
recombinants are MMR
. Coupling a single cross and
selection with either mutagenesis or selection for spontaneous mutants
also results in a dramatic increase in MMR
cells. We
discuss how horizontal transfer can result in mutator strains during
adaptive evolution.
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