Mutational meltdown of microbial altruists in Streptomyces coelicolor colonies

In colonies of the filamentous multicellular bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor, a subpopulation of cells arises that hyper-produces metabolically costly antibiotics, resulting in a division of labor that maximizes colony fitness. Because these cells contain large genomic deletions that cause massive reductions to individual fitness, their behavior is altruistic. In this project, a mutation accumulation experiment, combined with whole-genome sequencing, is used to understand the reproductive and genomic fate of these mutant cells after their emergence.