The Rate and Spectrum of Spontaneous Mutations in Mycobacterium smegmatis, a Bacterium Naturally Devoid of the Post-replicative Mismatch Repair Pathway

Mycobacterium smegmatis is a bacterium that is naturally devoid of known post-replicative DNA mismatch repair (MMR) homologs, mutS and mutL, providing an opportunity to investigate how the mutation rate and spectrum has evolved in the absence of a highly-conserved primary repair pathway. Mutation accumulation experiments of M. smegmatis yielded a base-substitution mutation rate of 5.27 x 10^-10 per site per generation, or 0.0036 per genome per generation, which is surprisingly similar to the mutation rate in MMR-functional unicellular organisms. Transitions were found more frequently than transversions, with the A:T -> G:C transition rate significantly higher than the G:C -> A:T transition rate, opposite to what is observed in most studied bacteria. We also found that the transition-mutation rate of M. smegmatis is significantly lower than that of other naturally MMR-devoid or MMR-knockout organisms. Two possible candidates that could be responsible for maintaining high DNA fidelity in this MMR-deficient organism are the ancestral-like DNA polymerase DnaE1, which contains a highly efficient DNA proofreading histidinol phosphatase (PHP) domain, and/or the existence of a Uracil-DNA glycosylase B (UdgB) homolog that might protect the GC-rich M. smegmatis genome against DNA damage arising from oxidation or deamination. Our results suggest that M. smegmatis has a non-canonical Dam (DNA adenine methylase) methylation system, with target motifs differing from those previously reported. The mutation features of M. smegmatis provide further evidence that genomes harbor alternative routes for improving replication fidelity even in the absence of major repair pathways.

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