ArticlePLoS genetics2010
Evidence that mutation is universally biased towards AT in bacteria.
Article in PLoS genetics, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 291 papers.
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Who cites it
291 citing papers in PubMed.
- Strain-Specific Loci in Bacterial Genomes: Whole-Genome Discovery, Genomic Context, and Application for Multi-Strain qPCR Monitoring.Microorganisms · 2026Article
- Evolutionary causes and consequences of gene duplication.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- Progress and prospects of parasitic plant biodiversity genomics.Plant & cell physiology · 2026Review
- Interpreting GC content differences across populations at polymorphic sites.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Spontaneous mutation rate and spectrum are modulated by organismal fitness.Science advances · 2026Article
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- Assembly of theGenes · 2026Article
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- Bacterial mutation dynamics emerging insights into virulence evolution and drug resistance. A review study.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Review
- Elevated rates and biased spectra of mutations in anaerobically cultured lactic acid bacteria.mBio · 2025Article
- Bacterial gene 5' ends have unusual mutation rates that can mislead tests of selection.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Stable Hypermutators Revealed by the Genomic Landscape of Genes Involved in Genome Stability Among Yeast Species.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Comprehensive Mutational Landscape of Yeast Mutator Strains Reveals the Genetic Basis of Mutational Signatures in Cancer.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Linear covariation between germline and somatic mutation rates across ciliates and mammals.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Generalist Malaria Parasites and Host Imprinting: Unveiling Transcriptional Memory.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Idiosyncratic evolvability among single-point ribosomal mutants towards multi-aminoglycoside resistance.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Two Melanthiaceae genomes with dramatic size difference provide insights into giant genome evolution and maintenance.Nature plants · 2025Article
- GnT Motifs Can Increase T:A→G:C Mutation Rates Over 1000-fold in Bacteria.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Host-Specific Adaptation of Legionella pneumophila to Single and Multiple Hosts.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Comparative Genomics Insights Into the Evolutionary Disparities Between Nitroplast-Evolved Ecotype UCYN-A2 and Its Closest Relative UCYN-A1.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
231 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Mutation is the engine that drives evolution and adaptation forward in that it generates the variation on which natural selection acts. Mutation is a random process that nevertheless occurs according to certain biases. Elucidating mutational biases and the way they vary across species and within genomes is crucial to understanding evolution and adaptation. Here we demonstrate that clonal pathogens that evolve under severely relaxed selection are uniquely suitable for studying mutational biases in bacteria. We estimate mutational patterns using sequence datasets from five such clonal pathogens belonging to four diverse bacterial clades that span most of the range of genomic nucleotide content. We demonstrate that across different types of sites and in all four clades mutation is consistently biased towards AT. This is true even in clades that have high genomic GC content. In all studied cases the mutational bias towards AT is primarily due to the high rate of C/G to T/A transitions. These results suggest that bacterial mutational biases are far less variable than previously thought. They further demonstrate that variation in nucleotide content cannot stem entirely from variation in mutational biases and that natural selection and/or a natural selection-like process such as biased gene conversion strongly affect nucleotide content.
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