Phenotypic Convergence in Bacterial Adaptive Evolution to Ethanol Stress

Although the relationship between phenotypic plasticity and evolutionary dynamics has attracted large interest, very little is known about the contribution of phenotypic plasticity to adaptive evolution. In this study, we analyzed phenotypic and genotypic changes in E. coli cells during adaptive evolution to ethanol stress. To quantify the phenotypic changes, transcriptome analyses were performed. We previously obtained 6 independently evolved ethanol tolerant E. coli strains, strains A through F, by culturing cells under 5% ethanol stress for about 1000 generations and found a significantly larger growth rate than the parent strains (Horinouchi et al, 2010, PMID: 20955615). To elucidate the phenotypic changes that occurred during adaptive evolution, we quantified the time-series of the expression changes by microarray analysis. Starting from frozen stocks obtained at 6 time points (0, 384, 744, 1224, 1824 and 2496 hours) in laboratory evolution, cells were cultured under 5% ethanol stress, and mRNA samples were obtained in the exponential growth phase for microarray analysis.