Table 1.

Mutation rates per nucleotide site (× 10⁻⁹) in a variety of tissues.

			Mutation ratesb
Species	Tissue	Cell divisions per generationa	Per generation	Per cell division
Homo sapiens	Germline	216	12.85	0.06
	Retina	55	54.45	0.99
	Intestinal epithelium	600	162.00	0.27
	Fibroblast (culture)			1.34
	Lymphocytes (culture)			1.47
Mus musculus	Male germline	39	38.00	0.97
	Brain		76.94
	Colon		83.35
	Epidermis		90.38
	Intestine		117.69
	Liver		237.88
	Lung		166.83
	Spleen		130.00
Rattus norvegicus	Colon		178.38
	Kidney		167.45
	Liver		179.92
	Lung		223.22
	Mammary gland		57.70
	Prostate		448.90
	Spleen		101.62
Drosophila melanogaster	Germline	36	4.65	0.13
	Whole body		380.92
Caenorhabditis elegans	Germline	9	5.60	0.62
Arabidopsis thaliana	Germline	40	6.50	0.16
Saccharomyces cerevisiae		1	0.33	0.33
Escherichia coli		1	0.26	0.26

^aReferences to data on numbers of germline cell divisions: human (Crow 2000); D. melanogaster and mouse (Drost and Lee 1995); C. elegans (Wilkins 1992); and . A. thaliana (Hoffman et al. 2004). Numbers of cell divisions are unknown for the mouse and rat rates.

^bMammalian tissue-specific rates are given only for tissues in which at least two independent estimates have been acquired. All data on human mutation rates are taken from Lynch (2010). Data for somatic mutation rates in mouse and rat are derived from references contained within the Supplementary Material. References to data on germline mutation rates: D. melanogaster (Keightley et al. 2009); C. elegans (Denver et al. 2009); A. thaliana (Ossowski et al. 2009); S. cerevisiae (Lynch et al. 2008); and E. coli (Lynch 2006).