Genome resequencing of the E. coli populations experienced repeated starvation-resuscitation

To understand how microbes survive from the severe environmental recursion of stress and relaxation, experimental evolution toward an engineered E. coli strain MDS42(-hisF::gfp-Km) that required histidine for its growth was performed. E. coli cells were initially grown in the presence of 10 uM of histidine, and the evolution experiment was conducted in three independent linages. Total seven rounds (R1- R7) of repeated starvation and resuscitation were performed. The details of the evolution experiment was described previously (Ying et al, 2015). To identify the genome mutations accumulated during the repeated starvation-resuscitation, the evolved populations of R1~R7 and the ancestor R0 were subjected to the genome resequencing analysis in the present project. The linkages between genome mutations and the evolved sustainability during nutritional oscillation is investigated.