Moderate nucleotide diversity in the Atlantic herring is associated with a low mutation rate
Feng, Chungang; Pettersson, Mats; Lamichhaney, Sangeet; Rubin, Carl-Johan; Rafati, Nima; Casini, Michele; Folkvord, Arild; Andersson, Leif
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Published version

Åpne
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/1956/17079Utgivelsesdato
2017-06-30Metadata
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Originalversjon
https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.23907Sammendrag
The Atlantic herring is one of the most abundant vertebrates on earth but its nucleotide diversity is moderate (π = 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 × 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.