Barbara Ritzl-Rinkenberger

3 weeks ago | elifesciences.org | Nicolas Desprat |Monica Gerth |Barbara Ritzl-Rinkenberger |Andrew Farr

eLife Assessment This important study combines convincing evolution experiments with molecular and genetic techniques to study how a genetic lesion in MreB that causes rod-shaped cells to become spherical, with concomitant deleterious fitness effects, can be rescued by natural selection. The detailed mechanistic investigation increases our understanding of how mreB contributes to cell wall synthesis and shows how compensatory mutations may reestablish its homogeneity.