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Volume 575 Issue 7783, 21 November 2019

Waves of mutation

In this week’s issue, Michael Desai and his colleagues demonstrate a barcoding strategy to visualize and track evolving mutations at high resolution in budding yeast. The result is a picture of the ‘travelling wave’ of adaptation, as seen on the cover, in which beneficial mutations compete for dominance (the lines represent separate lineages). The travelling wave shows how the distribution of fitness changes within the yeast population over time, and matches theoretical predictions. The researchers observe that clonal competition creates a dynamic ‘the-rich-get-richer’ effect, as fitness advantages acquired early in evolution drive a lineage to expand, increasing the chance of acquiring future mutations. The visualizations offer a fresh perspective on the factors that control the rate, predictability and molecular basis of adaptation.

Cover image: Ivana Cvijovic, Artur Rego-Costa & Alex N. Nguyen Ba

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