Pseudogene repair driven by selection pressure applied in experimental evolution

Pseudogenes represent open reading frames that have been damaged by mutations, rendering the gene product nonfunctional. Pseudogenes are found in many genomes and are not always eliminated, even if they are potentially 'wasteful'. This raises a fundamental question about their prevalence. Here we report pseudogene efeU repair that restores the iron uptake system of Escherichia coli under a designed selection pressure during adaptive laboratory evolution.