ArticleGenetics2012
Estimate of the spontaneous mutation rate in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
Article in Genetics, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 72 papers.
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Who cites it
72 citing papers in PubMed, 140 citations in OpenAlex.
- Stabilizing and directional selection shape the genetic variation of gene expression in the transcriptome of Chlamydomonas.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Pan-microalgal dark proteome mapping via interpretable deep learning and synthetic chimeras.Patterns (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Isolation and characterization of a spore development mutant in Pyropia yezoensis (Rhodophyta) induced via insertional mutagenesis.Journal of phycology · 2025Article
- Low Mutation Rate and Atypical Mutation Spectrum in Prasinoderma coloniale: Insights From an Early Diverging Green Lineage.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- The Effects of De Novo Mutation on Gene Expression and the Consequences for Fitness in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Gene birth in a model of non-genic adaptation.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Experimental estimates of germline mutation rate in eukaryotes: a phylogenetic meta-analysis.Evolution letters · 2023Article
- Low Spontaneous Mutation Rate in Complex Multicellular Eukaryotes with a Haploid-Diploid Life Cycle.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Evolution of snow algae, from cosmopolitans to endemics, revealed by DNA analysis of ancient ice.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- Chromatin structure influences rate and spectrum of spontaneous mutations inGenome research · 2023Article
- Very Low Rates of Spontaneous Gene Deletions and Gene Duplications in Dictyostelium discoideum.Journal of molecular evolution · 2023Article
- Rates and spectra of de novo structural mutations inGenome research · 2023Article
- Is there still evolution in the human population?Biologia futura · 2022Review
- Mutagenic effects of sodium azide on in vitro mutagenesis, polymorphism and genomic instability in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.).Molecular biology reports · 2022Article
- Selection in a growing colony biases results of mutation accumulation experiments.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Strain Development in Microalgal Biotechnology-Random Mutagenesis Techniques.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- The distribution of fitness effects of spontaneous mutations in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii inferred using frequency changes under experimental evolution.PLoS genetics · 2022Article
- Causes of variability in estimates of mutational variance from mutation accumulation experiments.Genetics · 2022Article
- De Novo Mutation Rate Variation and Its Determinants in Chlamydomonas.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Fitness effects of spontaneous mutations in a warming world.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2021Article
12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The nature of spontaneous mutations, including their rate, distribution across the genome, and fitness consequences, is of central importance to biology. However, the low rate of mutation has made it difficult to study spontaneous mutagenesis, and few studies have directly addressed these questions. Here, we present a direct estimate of the mutation rate and a description of the properties of new spontaneous mutations in the unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. We conducted a mutation accumulation experiment for ∼350 generations followed by whole-genome resequencing of two replicate lines. Our analysis identified a total of 14 mutations, including 5 short indels and 9 single base mutations, and no evidence of larger structural mutations. From this, we estimate a total mutation rate of 3.23 × 10(-10)/site/generation (95% C.I. 1.82 × 10(-10) to 5.23 × 10(-10)) and a single base mutation rate of 2.08 × 10(-10)/site/generation (95% C.I., 1.09 × 10(-10) to 3.74 × 10(-10)). We observed no mutations from A/T → G/C, suggesting a strong mutational bias toward A/T, although paradoxically, the GC content of the C. reinhardtii genome is very high. Our estimate is only the second direct estimate of the mutation rate from plants and among the lowest spontaneous base-substitution rates known in eukaryotes.
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