Mutator lineages are also more likely to suffer deleterious mutations that reduce their fitness and potentially lead to extinction.
Mutations that reduce the catalytic activity of this enzyme have strong mutator effects, and dnaQ null mutants have severe, often lethal, growth phenotypes, resulting from the extreme rate of replication errors (Lifsics et al. 1992; Fijalkowska and Schaaper 1996).
Sequencing of selected clones allowed the identification of mutations that reduce SCF binding affinity to c-Kit.
Here, we used immunoinformatic tools to identify C2 domain HLA DR epitopes and predict site-specific mutations that reduce immunogenicity.
Thus construction of E. coli strains for pyruvate production involves introducing mutations that reduce utilization of pyruvate for cell growth and deletion of nonessential pathways through pyruvate metabolism.
This results from repeated selective sweeps of mutations that reduce the length of the phage tail-fiber proteins, presumably allowing the phages to attach deeper and deeper onto their target cell-surface molecules (Steve Paterson, personal communication).
Extensive mutational analyses of the P22 tailspike protein have revealed two main phenotypes: temperature-sensitive-folding (tsf) mutations that reduce the folding efficiency at elevated temperatures, and global suppressor (su) mutations that increase the tailspike folding efficiency.
Secondly, studies of the sequence determinants of protein aggregation culminated in the development of computer algorithms that predict aggregation-prone sequences with good accuracy, allowing the design of mutations that reduce aggregation.
The chances of that are so miniscule that it suggests alternative explanations, says medical geneticist Garry Cutting of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who has found mutations that reduce the severity of cystic fibrosis through a different approach.
While mutations that reduce hemocyte numbers are lethal in adults [60], [61], bead injection provides a simple method to inhibit phagocytosis in adult hemocytes.
Some experimental data and theoretical arguments also suggest that mutations that reduce lag phase should be among the first to be fixed in serial passage experiments [19].
