Bacterial transformation, a programmed mechanism for genetic exchange originally
discovered in Streptococcus pneumoniae, is widespread in bacteria. It is based on the …

From microbes to multicellular eukaryotic organisms, all cells contain pathways responsible
for genome maintenance. DNA replication allows for the faithful duplication of the genome …

Staphylococcus aureus infections can be difficult to treat due to both multidrug resistance
and the organism's remarkable ability to persist in the host. Persistence and the evolution of …

Genome-scale engineering enables rational removal of dispensable genes in chassis
genomes. Deviating from this approach, we applied greedy accumulation of deletions of …

Increased mutation rates under stress allow bacterial populations to adapt rapidly to
stressors, including antibiotics. Here we evaluate existing models for the evolution of stress …

We have investigated in vivo the role of the carboxy-terminal domain of the Bacillus subtilis
Single-Stranded DNA Binding protein (SSBCter) as a recruitment platform at active …

Mutations in an organism's genome can arise spontaneously, that is, in the absence of
exogenous stress and prior to selection. Mutations are often neutral or deleterious to …

We previously reported that lagging-strand genes accumulate mutations faster than those
encoded on the leading strand in Bacillus subtilis. Although we proposed that orientation …

Background Bacillus spores are notoriously resistant to unfavorable conditions such as UV
radiation, γ-radiation, H2O2, desiccation, chemical disinfection, or starvation. Bacillus …

DNA polymerases of the Y-family, such as Escherichia coli UmuC and DinB, are specialized
enzymes induced by the SOS response, which bypass lesions allowing the continuation of …