Encoded errors: mutations and rearrangements mediated by misalignment at repetitive DNA sequences.

Mutations and rearrangements that occur by misalignment during DNA replication are frequent sources of genetic variation in bacteria. Dislocations between a replicating strand and its template at repetitive DNA sequences underlie the mechanism of these genetic events. Such misalignments can be transient or stable and can involve intramolecular or intermolecular DNA mispairing, even pairing across a replication fork. Paradoxically, these replication 'slippage' events both create and destroy repetitive sequences in bacterial genomes. This review catalogues several types of slippage errors, presents the cellular processes that act to limit them and discusses the consequences of this class of genetic events on the evolution of bacterial genomes and physiology.