A recently published paper entitled “Competition for nutritional resources masks the true frequency of bacterial mutants” describes the results of a research conducted by my group at the Laboratory of Bacterial Genetics about the curious phenomenon of hidden mutants in a bacterial population. We have been puzzled by the low frequency of mutants in the bacterial cultures and cracked our heads to understand the mystery. Eventually the riddle was solved and its solution was connected to competition, game theory and surprisingly to cooperation and production. First, a brief introduction about bacterial nutrition, genetics and evolution is required: Escherichia coli is

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