Aston E, Channon A, Belavkin RV, Gifford DR, Krašovec R, Knight CG. Critical Mutation Rate has an Exponential Dependence on Population Size for Eukaryotic-length Genomes with Crossover.
Sci Rep 2017;
7:15519. [PMID:
29138394 PMCID:
PMC5686101 DOI:
10.1038/s41598-017-14628-x]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/30/2017] [Accepted: 10/02/2017] [Indexed: 01/22/2023] Open
Abstract
The critical mutation rate (CMR) determines the shift between survival-of-the-fittest and survival of individuals with greater mutational robustness ("flattest"). We identify an inverse relationship between CMR and sequence length in an in silico system with a two-peak fitness landscape; CMR decreases to no more than five orders of magnitude above estimates of eukaryotic per base mutation rate. We confirm the CMR reduces exponentially at low population sizes, irrespective of peak radius and distance, and increases with the number of genetic crossovers. We also identify an inverse relationship between CMR and the number of genes, confirming that, for a similar number of genes to that for the plant Arabidopsis thaliana (25,000), the CMR is close to its known wild-type mutation rate; mutation rates for additional organisms were also found to be within one order of magnitude of the CMR. This is the first time such a simulation model has been assigned input and produced output within range for a given biological organism. The decrease in CMR with population size previously observed is maintained; there is potential for the model to influence understanding of populations undergoing bottleneck, stress, and conservation strategy for populations near extinction.
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