Bacteria in the mother machine showing replication mutationsMARINA ELEZ AND JEAN OLLIONMutations are the driving force for variation and evolution of life, yet most of what is known about mutational dynamics is based on inference from indirect measures. Now, a group of researchers in France have used a microfluidic device that allows the simultaneous observation of hundreds of individual Escherichia coli cells as they divide and mutate over multiple replication cycles. The team reports the findings from the device, called the “mother machine,” in Science today (March 15).
“Mutations are so central to biology,” Martin Ackermann, a molecular microbial ecologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who was not involved in the study, writes in an email to The Scientist. “On one hand, they are the basis of evolutionary innovation and of the diversity of life on our planet. On the other hand, they are the root of some of the most pressing medical problems that we face. . . . Understanding the timing at which mutations occur and the effects they have on organisms is thus a central goal in biology. This study represents a large step towards this goal.”
Stephan Uphoff, a bacterial mutagenesis researcher at the University of Oxford who was also not involved in the study, ...
