Publication Date:
2005-08-19
Description:
New deleterious mutations may reduce health and fitness and are involved in the evolution and maintenance of numerous biological processes. Hence, it is important to estimate the deleterious genomic mutation rate ( U ) in representative higher organisms. However, these estimated rates vary widely, mainly because of inadequate experimental controls. Here we describe an experimental design (the Binscy assay) with concomitant sibling controls and estimate U for viability in Drosophila melanogaster to be 0.31. This estimate, like most published studies, focuses on viability mutations and the overall deleterious genomic mutation rate would therefore be higher.
Print ISSN:
1744-9561
Electronic ISSN:
1744-957X
Topics:
Biology
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