Global Discovery of Adaptive Mutations

While modern DNA sequencing enables rapid identification of genetic variation, characterizing the phenotypic consequences of individual mutations remains a labor-intensive task. Here, we describe ADAM (Array-based Discovery of Adaptive Mutations), a technology that searches an entire bacterial genome for mutations that contribute to selectable phenotypic variation between an evolved strain and its parent. We show that ADAM finds adaptive mutations in laboratory-evolved Escherichia coli strains with high sensitivity and specificity.