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A spotlight on bacterial mutations for 75 years

In the debate about how bacterial mutations arise, an experiment in 1943 showed that they can occur spontaneously and independently of a selection pressure. This study also popularized the use of maths-driven analysis of biological data.
  1. Manoshi S. Datta

    1. Manoshi S. Datta is in the Faculty of Biology, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel.

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  2. Roy Kishony

    1. Roy Kishony is in the Faculty of Biology, Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3200003, Israel.

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Do bacteria acquire mutations randomly, or do mutations arise adaptively as a direct response to environmental pressures? This question has wide implications in areas ranging from evolution to the treatment of bacterial infections. In 1943, writing in Genetics, Luria and Delbrück1 revealed, by a combination of experimental analysis and profound mathematical insight, that bacteria evolve through random mutations that arise independently of an environmental stress, and that occur even before bacteria encounter such selective conditions. Their study was a milestone in a debate about the nature and causes of bacterial evolution that is still ongoing. Moreover, this work has inspired the fields of microbial evolution and quantitative biology.

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Nature 563, 633-644 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07521-8

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