Mutation Rates in Man

Abstract

THERE is at present no information concerning mutation rates in vertebrates. But where a gene produces a very great unfitness from the Darwinian point of view, that is to say, greatly diminishes the mean number of offspring produced by its bearers, then it will tend to disappear if its numbers are not kept up by mutation. The rate of disappearance is extremely slow for an autosomal recessive, very rapid for a dominant or a sex-linked recessive.