To determine the reproducibility of mutation frequency measurements, you do the following experiment. You inoculate each of 10 cultures with a single E. coli bacterium, allow the cultures to grow until each contains 106 cells, and then measure the number of cells in each culture that carry a mutation in your gene of interest. You were so surprised by the initial results that you repeated the experiment to confirm them. Both sets of results display the same extreme variability, as shown in Table Q5–1. Assuming that the rate of mutation is constant, why do you suppose there is so much variation in the frequencies of mutant cells in different cultures?

Table Q5-1

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TABLE Q5-1 Frequencies of mutant cells in multiple cultures (Problem 5-6) Culture (mutant cells/106 cells) Experiment 1 2 3 4 5 9. 10 1 4 0 257 1 2 32 2 1 2 128 0 1 4 66 2 CO 7,