Pettersson, Mats
- Uppsala University
Abstract
The Atlantic herring is one of the most abundant vertebrates on earth but its nucleotide diversity is moderate (pi = 0.3%), only three-fold higher than in human. Here, we present a pedigree-based estimation of the mutation rate in this species. Based on whole-genome sequencing of four parents and 12 offspring, the estimated mutation rate is 2.0 x 10(-9) per base per generation. We observed a high degree of parental mosaicism indicating that a large fraction of these de novo mutations occurred during early germ cell development. The estimated mutation rate the lowest among vertebrates analyzed to date - partially explains the discrepancy between the rather low nucleotide diversity in herring and its huge census population size. But a species like the herring will never reach its expected nucleotide diversity because of fluctuations in population size over the millions of years it takes to build up high nucleotide diversity.
Keywords
Atlantic herring; Clupea harengus; genetics; mutation rates; nucleotide diversity; whole-genome sequencing
Published in
eLife
2017, volume: 6, article number: e23907
Publisher: ELIFE SCIENCES PUBLICATIONS LTD
SLU Authors
Casini, Michele
- Department of Aquatic Resources (SLU Aqua), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Department of Aquatic Resources (SLU Aqua), Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Andersson, Leif
- Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Texas A&M University
- Uppsala University
- Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
UKÄ Subject classification
Evolutionary Biology
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.23907
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/92564