ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
Evidence for elevated mutation rates in low-quality genotypes.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers.
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Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed.
- piRNA loss unleashes episodic transposition bursts.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Not just mutations: inbreeding depression persists without genetic variation.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Cathepsin B protease mediates high population density-induced mutagenesis to drive genome evolution and competitive growth.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Spontaneous mutation rate and spectrum are modulated by organismal fitness.Science advances · 2026Article
- Bacterial diet influences mutation rate in Pristionchus pacificus.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Article
- Cysteine protease cathepsin B promotes high population density-induced mutagenesis, driving genome evolution and competitive growth in response to the crowding stress.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Review
- Parental age selection in C. elegans influences progeny stress resistance capacity.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2025Article
- Contrasting mutation patterns in haploid and diploid cells from two yeast species.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Yeast mutation rates in alternative carbon sources reflect the influence of reactive oxygen species.microPublication biology · 2025Article
- Sex-specific growth and lifespan effects of germline removal in the dioecious nematode Caenorhabditis remanei.Aging cell · 2024Article
- Variation in the Spectrum of New Mutations among Inbred Strains of Mice.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Coevolution of longevity and female germline maintenance.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The divergence of mutation rates and spectra across the Tree of Life.EMBO reports · 2023Review
- Increased male investment in sperm competition results in reduced maintenance of gametes.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Article
- Are mutations usually deleterious? A perspective on the fitness effects of mutation accumulation.Evolutionary ecology · 2022Article
- Non-CG DNA methylation-deficiency mutations enhance mutagenesis rates during salt adaptation in cultured Arabidopsis cells.Stress biology · 2021Article
- Mutability of mononucleotide repeats, not oxidative stress, explains the discrepancy between laboratory-accumulated mutations and the natural allele-frequency spectrum inGenome research · 2021Article
- Temperature dependence of spontaneous mutation rates.Genome research · 2021Article
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2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The deleterious mutation rate plays a key role in a number of important topics in biology, from mating system evolution to human health. Despite this broad significance, the nature and causes of variation in mutation rate are poorly understood, especially in multicellular organisms. We test whether genetic quality, the presence or absence of deleterious alleles, affects the mutation rate in Drosophila melanogaster by using a modified mutation accumulation approach. We find evidence that genotypes constructed to carry deleterious "treatment" alleles on one chromosome during mutation accumulation experience an elevated mutation rate on a different chromosome. Further, this elevation is correlated with the effect of the treatment alleles on phenotypic condition, measured as body mass. Treatment alleles that reduce mass by 10% cause a doubling in the rate of mutational decline. Our results show that mutation rates are sensitive to genetic stress, such that individuals with low-quality genotypes will produce offspring of even lower genetic quality, in a mutational positive feedback loop. This type of variation in mutation rate is expected to alter a variety of predictions based on mutation load theory and accelerate adaptation to new environments. Positive mutational feedback could affect human health by increasing the rate of germline mutation, and possibly somatic mutation, in individuals of poor health because of genetic or environmental stress.
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