. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Oct 11.

Published in final edited form as: Bioessays. 2009 Sep;31(9):912–920. doi: 10.1002/bies.200900017

Table 1.

Pre-genomic computational estimates of the deleterious mutation rate in model organisms

Organism	U_D	Method	Reference
D. melanogaster	0.14	BM	42
	0.17	BM	43
	0.06	BM	109
	0.02	BM	48
	0.01	ML	48
	0.01	ML	46
C. elegans	0.0026 (haploid)	ML	110
	0.05	BM	58
	0.005 (haploid)	ML	49
S. cerevisiae	6.3 × 10⁻⁵ (haploid)	ML	14
	9.5 × 10⁻⁵	ML	50

All estimates for U_D, the deleterious mutation rate per genome, are for diploid genomes, unless otherwise noted. BM refers to Bateman-Mukai, and ML to Maximum Likelihood. U_D is shown as the number of deleterious mutations/genome/division (per generation for multicellular organisms).