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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Aug 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Genet. 2016 Feb 26;62(3):507–512. doi: 10.1007/s00294-016-0573-7

Table 1.

Comparison of repeated, genome-wide estimates of single nucleotide (μSNM) and small (≤ 50bp) insertion/deletion (μindel) mutation rates across species obtained from mutation accumulation (MA) experiments. Differences between the two estimates within a species are tested for significance using a Welch's t-test, with appropriate degrees of freedom. To calculate the standard error for the t-test, the variance among lines in the number of mutations is assumed to be equal to the mean number of mutations per line, which assumes that mutation is a Poisson process. The fold difference (diff) between estimates within a species is shown (= larger/smaller estimate). The number of MA lines (N) and generations of accumulation (Gens), and the number of observed mutation events used for parameter estimation (SNMs and Indels) are shown. N = number of mutation accumulation lines in the study, Gens = generations, SNM = single nucleotide mutation, indel = insertion/deletion of less than 50bp, CI = confidence interval, NS = not significant.

Species Studya N Gens SNMs Indels μSNM (CIb) (× 10−9) μSNM diff μindel (CIb) (× 10−9) μindel diff
Arabidopsis thaliana 1 5 30 98 13 4.84 (3.86-5.82) 1.34 0.64 (0.28-1.00) 1.10
2 9 10 44 7 3.62 (2.53-4.71) NS 0.58 (0.14-1.01) NS
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii 3 2 350 9 5 0.21 (0.07-0.35) 3.5 0.12 (0.01-0.22) 3.00
4 4 1730 20 13 0.06 (0.03-0.09) NS 0.04 (0.01-0.06) NS
Drosophila melanogaster 5 8 147 732 60 5.49 (5.08-5.90) 1.96 0.45 (0.33-0.57) 2.67
6 12 1 6 3 2.80 (0.51-5.09) P<0.05 1.20 (0.00-3.02) NS
Caenorhabditis elegans 7 7 250 108 - 1.33 (1.07-1.59) 2.53 - -
8 6 20 60 7 3.37 (2.50-4.24) P<0.01 0.58 (0.100.69)
Schizosaccharo myces pombe 9 96 1716 398 117 0.20 (0.18-0.22) 1.18 0.06 (0.05-0.07) 2.83
10 79 1952 327 335 0.17 (0.15-0.19) P<0.05 0.17 (0.16-0.19) P<10−5
Saccharomyces cerevisiae c 11 2 1000 14 0 0.29 (0.14-0.45) 1.71 - -
12 140 2062 867 26 0.17 (0.16-0.18) NS 0.005 (0.00-0.01)
a

1 = Ossowski et al. 2010, 2 = Jiang et al. 2014, 3 =Ness et al. 2012, 4 = Sung et al. 2012, 5 = Schrider et al. 2012, 6 = Keightley et al. 2014, 7 = Denver et al. 2012, 8 = Meier et al. 2014, 9 = Farlow et al. 2015, 10 = Behringer and Hall 2016, 11 = Nishant et al. 2010, 12 = Zhu et al. 2014.

b

Confidence intervals are from standard errors of the number of mutations per line, which are estimated by assuming a Poisson distribution of mutations across lines.

c

Diploid strains