1. Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK
2. These authors contributed equally to this work.
3. Present addresses: Grupo de Medicina Xenómica, Instituto de Medicina Legal, Universidade de Santiago, S. Francisco s/n, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain (X.M.); Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, St. Andrews Place, East Melbourne, Victoria 3002, Australia (S.M.).

Correspondence to: Peter D. Keightley¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to P.D.K. (Email: keightley.drosmutrate@spambob.net).

Abstract

Spontaneous mutations are the source of genetic variation required for evolutionary change, and are therefore important for many aspects of evolutionary biology. For example, the divergence between taxa at neutrally evolving sites in the genome is proportional to the per nucleotide mutation rate, u (ref. 1), and this can be used to date speciation events by assuming a molecular clock. The overall rate of occurrence of deleterious mutations in the genome each generation (U) appears in theories of nucleotide divergence and polymorphism², the evolution of sex and recombination³, and the evolutionary consequences of inbreeding². However, estimates of U based on changes in allozymes⁴ or DNA sequences⁵ and fitness traits are discordant^{6, 7, 8}. Here we directly estimate u in Drosophila melanogaster by scanning 20 million bases of DNA from three sets of mutation accumulation lines by using denaturing high-performance liquid chromatography⁹. From 37 mutation events that we detected, we obtained a mean estimate for u of 8.4  10^-9 per generation. Moreover, we detected significant heterogeneity in u among the three mutation-accumulation-line genotypes. By multiplying u by an estimate of the fraction of mutations that are deleterious in natural populations of Drosophila¹⁰, we estimate that U is 1.2 per diploid genome. This high rate suggests that selection against deleterious mutations may have a key role in explaining patterns of genetic variation in the genome, and help to maintain recombination and sexual reproduction.

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