Which bacteria have the highest mutation rate?

Question

From my reading on *M. tuberculosis*, I know that this organism has a pretty high mutation rate due to uncorrected sloppy replication, which leads to a high rate of development of spontaneous resistance to treatment.Are there species that can beat *M. tuberculosis* in this degree of mutation, due to polymerase sloppiness or other mechanism?

Answer 1

Yes. What we call "lesser" meaning less evolved organisms have DNA polyermerase without a proof reading function. Interestingly, some organisms throughout evolution find it advantageous to keep this slacker around. They do this to speed up the mutation rate (randomly) in hopes of surviving whatever the next obstacle will be. Some more crazy stuff are organisms that have additional enzymes that flip flop and swap their genes around at random. A name of one of these enzymes if translocase. I don't know of any off the top of my head, but they are out there.