ArticleGenome biology and evolution2016
Low Base-Substitution Mutation Rate in the Germline Genome of the Ciliate Tetrahymena thermophil.
Article in Genome biology and evolution, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolution of the highest fidelity DNA replication systems.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Heritable variation drives rapid evolution of thermal performance curves in the protist Tetrahymena thermophila.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Linear covariation between germline and somatic mutation rates across ciliates and mammals.Current biology : CB · 2025Article
- Low Mutation Rate and Atypical Mutation Spectrum in Prasinoderma coloniale: Insights From an Early Diverging Green Lineage.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- What can we infer about mutation calling by using time-series mutation accumulation data and a Bayesian Mutation Finder?Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- The macronuclear genomic landscape withinMicrobial genomics · 2024Article
- Review
- Gene birth in a model of non-genic adaptation.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Low Spontaneous Mutation Rate in Complex Multicellular Eukaryotes with a Haploid-Diploid Life Cycle.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Very Low Rates of Spontaneous Gene Deletions and Gene Duplications in Dictyostelium discoideum.Journal of molecular evolution · 2023Article
- Experimental Evolution inMicroorganisms · 2022Review
- Article
- Temperature affects the repeatability of evolution in the microbial eukaryoteEcology and evolution · 2021Article
- De Novo Mutation Rate Variation and Its Determinants in Chlamydomonas.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Pedigree-based and phylogenetic methods support surprising patterns of mutation rate and spectrum in the gray mouse lemur.Heredity · 2021Article
- Stability across the Whole Nuclear Genome in the Presence and Absence of DNA Mismatch Repair.Cells · 2021Review
- The insect-killing bacteriumMarine life science & technology · 2021Article
- Identification and Characterization of Base-Substitution Mutations in the Macronuclear Genome of the Ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila.Genome biology and evolution · 2021Article
- Review
- Drivers of Mating Type Composition in Tetrahymena thermophila.Genome biology and evolution · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation and is, therefore, central to evolutionary change. Previous work on Paramecium tetraurelia found an unusually low germline base-substitution mutation rate in this ciliate. Here, we tested the generality of this result among ciliates using Tetrahymena thermophila. We sequenced the genomes of 10 lines of T. thermophila that had each undergone approximately 1,000 generations of mutation accumulation (MA). We applied an existing mutation-calling pipeline and developed a new probabilistic mutation detection approach that directly models the design of an MA experiment and accommodates the noise introduced by mismapped reads. Our probabilistic mutation-calling method provides a straightforward way of estimating the number of sites at which a mutation could have been called if one was present, providing the denominator for our mutation rate calculations. From these methods, we find that T. thermophila has a germline base-substitution mutation rate of 7.61 × 10 - 12 per-site, per cell division, which is consistent with the low base-substitution mutation rate in P. tetraurelia. Over the course of the evolution experiment, genomic exclusion lines derived from the MA lines experienced a fitness decline that cannot be accounted for by germline base-substitution mutations alone, suggesting that other genetic or epigenetic factors must be involved. Because selection can only operate to reduce mutation rates based upon the "visible" mutational load, asexual reproduction with a transcriptionally silent germline may allow ciliates to evolve extremely low germline mutation rates.
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