Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 102, Issue 16, Pages 5785-5790Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0406056102
Keywords
Caenorhabditis briggsae; Caenorhabditis elegans; deleterious mutation; mutation accumulation; Oscheius myriophila
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Funding
- NIGMS NIH HHS [F32 GM020887, R01 GM036827, 1F32 GM 20887-01, R01 GM 36827] Funding Source: Medline
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Deleterious mutations are of fundamental importance to all aspects of organismal biology. Evolutionary geneticists have expended tremendous effort to estimate the genome-wide rate of mutation and the effects of new mutations on fitness, but the degree to which genomic mutational properties vary within and between taxa is largely unknown, particularly in multicellular organisms. Beginning with two highly inbred strains from each of three species in the nematode family Rhabditidae (Caenorhabditis briggsae, Caenorhabditis elegans, and Oscheius myriophila), we allowed mutations to accumulate in the relative absence of natural selection for 200 generations. We document significant variation in the rate of decay of fitness because of new mutations between strains and between species. Estimates of the per-generation mutational decay of fitness were very consistent within strains between assays 100 generations apart. Rate of mutational decay in fitness was positively associated with genomic mutation rate and negatively associated with average mutational effect. These results provide unambiguous experimental evidence for substantial variation in genome-wide properties of mutation both within and between species and reinforce conclusions from previous experiments that the cumulative effects on fitness of new mutations can differ markedly among related taxa.
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