Microbial competition: Escherichia coli mutants that take over stationary phase cultures. Academic Article

abstract

• Many microorganisms, including Escherichia coli, can survive extended periods of starvation. The properties of cells that survived prolonged incubation in stationary phase were studied by mixture of 10-day-old (aged) cultures with 1-day-old (young) cultures of the same strain of Escherichia coli. Mutants from the aged cultures that could grow eventually took over the population, which resulted in the death of the cells from the young cultures. This phenotype was conferred by mutations in rpoS, which encodes a putative stationary phase-specific sigma factor. These rapid population shifts have implications for the studies of microbial evolution and ecology.

authors

• Siegele, Deborah

published proceedings

• Science

altmetric score

• 12.556

author list (cited authors)

• Zambrano, M. M., Siegele, D. A., Almirn, M., Tormo, A., & Kolter, R.

citation count

• 457

publication date

• January 1993

publisher

• American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)  Publisher

published in

• Science  Journal

keywords

• Acridine Orange
• Alleles
• Amino Acid Sequence
• Cloning, Molecular
• Escherichia Coli
• Hydrogen Peroxide
• Molecular Sequence Data
• Mutation
• Peroxidase
• Phenotype
• Sigma Factor
• Staining And Labeling
• Time Factors

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1126/science.7681219

start page

• 1757

end page

• 1760

volume

• 259

issue

• 5102

URL

• http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.1126%2Fscience.7681219