The Landscape of Adaptive Evolution of a Gut Commensal Bacteria in Aging Mice

Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655 was inoculated into specific pathogen-free old mice. At day 24 post-colonization, populations of Escherichia coli were isolated and their whole-genome sequenced. In one of the old mice, we performed amplicon sequencing from day 1 to day 22 post-colonization for one specific mutation (iscR). We also performed 16S rRNA sequencing of the gut microbiota from young and old mice before and after colonization with Escherichia coli. This project aimed to understand the evolutionary dynamics of bacteria in an aging host.