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LIFE HISTORY EVOLUTION

Signs of ageing

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 6, page 664 (2022)Cite this article

This article has been updated

Nature, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04618-z (2022)

Somatic mutations are thought to contribute to ageing, but measuring somatic mutation rates and testing this theory across species is challenging. Writing in Nature, Cagan et al. characterize the somatic mutation landscape in 16 mammalian species with a wide range of lifespans and body sizes. The authors estimate somatic mutation rates through genome sequencing of intestinal crypts. All mammals shared the same mutational signatures, which result from different forms of DNA damage and repair, although their relative contribution varied across species. The authors find no signature of somatic selection, suggesting that most somatic mutations in colorectal crypts generally accumulate neutrally across mammals. Mutations accumulated with age in all species analysed, but mutation rate per genome per year varied widely. The authors then explore the relationship between somatic mutation rates, lifespan and body mass. They find a negative correlation between somatic mutation rates per year and the lifespan of a species but see no effect of body size; these findings are consistent with the theory that somatic mutations contribute to ageing across mammals.

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  • 27 April 2022

    In the version of this article initially published online, there was an error in the featured article doi, which has now been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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  1. Nature Ecology & Evolution https://www.nature.com/natecolevol

    Vera Domingues

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  1. Vera Domingues
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Correspondence to Vera Domingues.

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Domingues, V. Signs of ageing. Nat Ecol Evol 6, 664 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-022-01751-w

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