Masel Joanna, Maughan Heather
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.
Genetics. 2007 Jan;175(1):453-7. doi: 10.1534/genetics.106.065201. Epub 2006 Nov 16.
We measured the rate of mutations impairing sporulation ability in Bacillus subtilis as 0.003 in a mutator population, following 6000 generations of strong selection for sporulation that have previously been described. This means that the product of the population size and the functional mutation rate is approximately 10(5), well within the parameter range for which genetic canalization of sporulation ability is expected.