ArticlePLoS biology2017
A shifting mutational landscape in 6 nutritional states: Stress-induced mutagenesis as a series of distinct stress input-mutation output relationships.
Article in PLoS biology, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers.
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Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed, 113 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Mutation bias alters the distribution of fitness effects of mutations.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Mutualism breakdown underpins evolutionary rescue in an obligate cross-feeding bacterial consortium.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The causal arrows from genotype, environment, and management to plant phenotype are double headed.Journal of experimental botany · 2025Review
- The dynamics of loss of heterozygosity events in genomes.EMBO reports · 2025Review
- Temporal Changes in the Role of Species Sorting and Evolution Determine Community Dynamics.Ecology letters · 2025Article
- SynonymousNAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2024Article
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- Collective peroxide detoxification determines microbial mutation rate plasticity in E. coli.PLoS biology · 2024Article
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- Environmental and genetic influence on the rate and spectrum of spontaneous mutations inMicrobiology (Reading, England) · 2024Article
- The divergence of mutation rates and spectra across the Tree of Life.EMBO reports · 2023Review
- Mutational hotspots lead to robust but suboptimal adaptive outcomes in certain environments.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- Shifts in Mutation Bias Promote Mutators by Altering the Distribution of Fitness Effects.The American naturalist · 2023Article
- Hypermutator emergence in experimentalEvolution letters · 2023Article
- Mutators can drive the evolution of multi-resistance to antibiotics.PLoS genetics · 2023Article
- Shifts in mutation spectra enhance access to beneficial mutations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Mutation bias and the predictability of evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Formation and emergent dynamics of spatially organized microbial systems.Interface focus · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Environmental stresses increase genetic variation in bacteria, plants, and human cancer cells. The linkage between various environments and mutational outcomes has not been systematically investigated, however. Here, we established the influence of nutritional stresses commonly found in the biosphere (carbon, phosphate, nitrogen, oxygen, or iron limitation) on both the rate and spectrum of mutations in Escherichia coli. We found that each limitation was associated with a remarkably distinct mutational profile. Overall mutation rates were not always elevated, and nitrogen, iron, and oxygen limitation resulted in major spectral changes but no net increase in rate. Our results thus suggest that stress-induced mutagenesis is a diverse series of stress input-mutation output linkages that is distinct in every condition. Environment-specific spectra resulted in the differential emergence of traits needing particular mutations in these settings. Mutations requiring transpositions were highest under iron and oxygen limitation, whereas base-pair substitutions and indels were highest under phosphate limitation. The unexpected diversity of input-output effects explains some important phenomena in the mutational biases of evolving genomes. The prevalence of bacterial insertion sequence transpositions in the mammalian gut or in anaerobically stored cultures is due to environmentally determined mutation availability. Likewise, the much-discussed genomic bias towards transition base substitutions in evolving genomes can now be explained as an environment-specific output. Altogether, our conclusion is that environments influence genetic variation as well as selection.
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