ArticleNature communications2021
A mutational hotspot that determines highly repeatable evolution can be built and broken by silent genetic changes.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mutation-biased adaptation is consequential even in large bacterial populations.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Transcription Factor Promiscuity Drives Regulatory Rewiring and Evolvability in Gene Networks in Bacteria.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Hurdles to horizontal gene transfer: species-specific effects of synonymous variation and plasmid copy number determine antibiotic resistance phenotype.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Article
- Fit for purpose: evaluation and evolution of agricultural bioinoculants across production landscapes.ISME communications · 2026Review
- Idiosyncratic evolvability among single-point ribosomal mutants towards multi-aminoglycoside resistance.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- GnT Motifs Can Increase T:A→G:C Mutation Rates Over 1000-fold in Bacteria.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
- Reduced Parallel Gene Expression Evolution With Increasing Genetic Divergence-A Hallmark of Polygenic Adaptation.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- An extreme mutational hotspot in nlpD depends on transcriptional induction of rpoS.PLoS genetics · 2025Article
- Chloramphenicol and gentamicin reduce the evolution of resistance to phage ΦX174 by suppressing a subset of E. coli LPS mutants.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Extending evolutionary forecasts across bacterial species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- A modeling of complex trait phenotypic variance determinants.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Evolution of evolvability in rapidly adapting populations.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Measuring the burden of hundreds of BioBricks defines an evolutionary limit on constructability in synthetic biology.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Mutation bias and adaptation in bacteria.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Review
- Evolutionary innovation through transcription factor rewiring in microbes is shaped by levels of transcription factor activity, expression, and existing connectivity.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Mutational hotspots lead to robust but suboptimal adaptive outcomes in certain environments.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- Transcription factor expression levels and environmental signals constrain transcription factor innovation.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
- Transient mutation bias increases the predictability of evolution on an empirical genotype-phenotype landscape.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Mutation bias and the predictability of evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Distribution of mutation rates challenges evolutionary predictability.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
Mutational hotspots can determine evolutionary outcomes and make evolution repeatable. Hotspots are products of multiple evolutionary forces including mutation rate heterogeneity, but this variable is often hard to identify. In this work, we reveal that a near-deterministic genetic hotspot can be built and broken by a handful of silent mutations. We observe this when studying homologous immotile variants of the bacteria Pseudomonas fluorescens, AR2 and Pf0-2x. AR2 resurrects motility through highly repeatable de novo mutation of the same nucleotide in >95% lines in minimal media (ntrB A289C). Pf0-2x, however, evolves via a number of mutations meaning the two strains diverge significantly during adaptation. We determine that this evolutionary disparity is owed to just 6 synonymous variations within the ntrB locus, which we demonstrate by swapping the sites and observing that we are able to both break (>95% to 0%) and build (0% to 80%) a deterministic mutational hotspot. Our work reveals a key role for silent genetic variation in determining adaptive outcomes.
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