RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Low base-substitution mutation rate in the ciliate <em>Tetrahymena thermophila</em>
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 025536
DO 10.1101/025536
A1 Hongan Long
A1 David J. Winter
A1 Allan Y-C. Chang
A1 Way Sung
A1 Steven H. Wu
A1 Mariel Balboa
A1 Ricardo B. R. Azevedo
A1 Reed A. Cartwright
A1 Michael Lynch
A1 Rebecca A. Zufall
YR 2015
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/09/16/025536.abstract
AB Mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation and is, therefore, central to evolutionary change. Previous work on the ciliate Paramecium tetraurelia concluded that the presence of a transcriptionally silent germline genome has caused the evolution of a low base-substitution mutation rate in the germline genome of that ciliate. Here, we use mutation accumulation (MA) lines of the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila to test the generality of this result. We find that both ciliates have similar base-substitution mutation rates in their germline genomes. The estimated base-substitution mutation rate cannot account for the observed fitness decline of the MA lines of T. thermophila, suggesting that the fitness decline may be caused by other factors.