by Merry Youle — Bac­te­ria that are born ge­net­i­cally equal aren't nec­es­sar­ily the same. The same genome, re­sid­ing in cells side-by-side in the same medium in the same flask, does not guar­an­tee the same phe­no­type. One ex­am­ple that comes to mind is the per­sis­ters in E. coli pop­u­la­tions − the small num­ber of cells that…