Figure 2. Polymerase error rates and the contributions of each fidelity process to mutation rate.

The image illustrates the wide ranges over which polymerase nucleotide selectivity, exonucleolytic proofreading and mismatch repair contribute to spontaneous mutation rates of organisms. Also depicted are the average rates at which purified eukaryotic DNA polymerases generate single base substitution and single base deletion errors when performing gap-filing DNA synthesis in vitro. See text for further descriptions. Details on the source and composition of the polymerases used, and on their error specificity, can be found in (McCulloch and Kunkel, 2008) and references therein.