Question

The mutation rate in bacteria is about 3 nucleotide changes per 10 billion nucleotides per cell generation. Under laboratory conditions, bacteria such as Escherichia coli can divide and double in number about every 40 minutes. If a single Escherichia coli cell is allowed to exponentially divide for 24 hours in this manner, how many mutations would you expect to observe on average in the genome (5 million nucleotides) of each of the resulting bacteria compared to the original cell

Answer 1

About 0.05 mutations

Step-by-step explanation:

Given that:

The no. of mutations per generation = 3 nucleotide changes per 10 billion or 3 per 10000 million.

For 5 million nucleotides; we have = (3/10000) × 5 = 0.0015

For 24 hours i.e 36 generations; we have:

= 0.0015 × 36

= 0.054 mutations