Engineering gene overlaps to sustain genetic constructs in vivo
Fig 5
Experimentally measured protection from mutations and expected resulting increase in circuit lifetime.
(a) The overlap protects galK from loss-of-function mutations. We measure the fraction of galK loss-of-functions (permitting growth on DOG) that did not affect kanR. The lower this fraction, the higher the protection. Each point represents an independent population. The violin plots show the median and kernel density estimation for 12 independent populations. (b) Theoretical median lifetime of the circuit, with the measured protection for the ΔmutS strain, depending on the rate of loss-of-function mutations and on population size. The lifetime is expressed as the number of generations before the first beneficial loss-of-function mutation emerges.