We are all mutants: Measurement of mutation rate in humans by direct sequencing
August 27, 2009An international team of 16 scientists today reports the first direct measurement of the general rate of genetic mutation at individual DNA letters in humans. The team sequenced the same piece of DNA - 10,000,000 or so letters or 'nucleotides' from the Y chromosome - from two men separated by 13 generations, and counted the number of differences. Among all these nucleotides, they found only four mutations.
In 1935 one of the founders of modern genetics, J. B. S. Haldane, studied men in London with the blood disease haemophilia and estimated that there would be one in 50,000 incidence of mutations causing haemophilia in the gene affected - the equivalent of a mutation rate of perhaps one in 25 million nucleotides across the genome. Others have measured rates at a few further specific genes or compared DNA from humans and chimpanzees to produce general estimates of the mutation rate expressed more directly in nucleotides of DNA.
Remarkably, the new research, published today in Current Biology, shows that these early estimates were spot on - in total, we all carry 100-200 new mutations in our DNA. This is equivalent to one mutation in each 15 to 30 million nucleotides. Fortunately, most of these are harmless and have no apparent effect on our health or appearance.
"The amount of data we generated would have been unimaginable just a few years ago," says Dr Yali Xue from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and one of the project's leaders. "But finding this tiny number of mutations was more difficult than finding an ant's egg in the emperor's rice store."
Team member Qiuju Wang recruited a family from China who had lived in the same village for centuries. The team studied two distant male-line relatives - separated by thirteen generations - whose common ancestor lived two hundred years ago.
To establish the rate of mutation, the team examined an area of the Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is unique in that, apart from rare mutations, it is passed unchanged from father to son; so mutations accumulate slowly over the generations.
Despite many generations of separation, researchers found only 12 differences among all the DNA letters examined. The two Y chromosomes were still identical at 10,149,073 of the 10,149,085 letters examined. Of the 12 differences, eight had arisen in the cell lines used for the work. Only four were true mutations that had occurred naturally through the generations.
We have known for a long time that mutations occur occasionally in each of us, but have had to guess exactly how often. Now, thanks to advances in the technology for reading DNA, this new research has been possible.
Understanding mutation rates is key to many aspects of human evolution and medical research: mutation is the ultimate source of all our genetic variation and provides a molecular clock for measuring evolutionary timescales. Mutations can also lead directly to diseases like cancer. With better measurements of mutation rates, we could improve the calibration of the evolutionary clock, or test ways to reduce mutations, for example.
Even with the latest DNA sequencing technology, the researchers had to design a special strategy to search for the vanishingly rare mutations. They used next-generation sequencing to establish the order of letters on the two Y chromosomes and then compared these to the Y chromosome reference sequence.
Having identified 23 candidate SNPs - or single letter changes in the DNA - they amplified the regions containing these candidates and checked the sequences using the standard Sanger method. A total of four naturally occurring mutations were confirmed. Knowing this number of mutations, the length of the area that they had searched and the number of generations separating the individuals, the team were able to calculate the rate of mutation.
"These four mutations gave us the exact mutation rate - one in 30 million nucleotides each generation - that we had expected," says the study's coordinator, Chris Tyler-Smith, also from The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. "This was reassuring because the methods we used - harnessing next-generation sequencing technology - had not previously been tested for this kind of research. New mutations are responsible for an array of genetic diseases. The ability to reliably measure rates of DNA mutation means we can begin to ask how mutation rates vary between different regions of the genome and perhaps also between different individuals."
Source: Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (news : web)
Jun 19, 2008 |
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Anyway, awesome discovery!
And an interesting sidenote; Adam estimated that humans diverged from chimps somewhere between 4.8 and 6.4 MYA, while this states a range of somewhere between 5 and 7 MYA: http://www.msnbc....0536414/
...Surprisingly close, really.
Also agree that Adam's math was quite an eye opener.
Life Scientists Are All Myopic,
They Think We Are All Mutants...
A. From "We are all mutants"
http://www.eureka...2509.php
- "Understanding mutation rates is key to many aspects of human evolution and medical research: mutation is the ultimate source of all our genetic variation and provides a molecular clock for measuring evolutionary timescales. Mutations can also lead directly to diseases like cancer. With better measurements of mutation rates, we could improve the calibration of the evolutionary clock, or test ways to reduce mutations, for example."
- "To establish the rate of mutation, the team examined an area of the Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is unique in that, apart from rare mutations, it is passed unchanged from father to son; so mutations accumulate slowly over the generations."
B. Genetic accidental "mutations" are minor contributors to genetic evolution
See "Evolution, Genetics And Culture"
http://www.the-sc...age#2485
Adaptation is culture. And culture is the driver of Universal Evolution, of all evolutions.
See "Rethink Unified Field Theory And Evolution"
http://www.the-sc...page#982
and see "Spontaneous Speciation?"
http://www.physor...378.html
C. An ironic twist...
Searching for genetic change rate in the human Y chromosome is searching at night for a lost coin under the street light only.
See "Conservation of Y-linked genes during human evolution revealed by comparative sequencing in chimpanzee"
http://www.the-sc...age#2887
And see especially "On The Origin And Tasks Of Brain Cells"
http://www.the-sc...age#2822
The human Y-linked genes are indeed conspicuously preserved. The irony is that this is part of THE proof that genetic changes are NOT brought about by "mutations", as it is culture that drives genetic changes!
Dov Henis
(Comments From The 22nd Century)
That is partially false. Culture is part of the environment and thus it does play a part in selection BUT it cannot produce the change in the genome. Mutations ARE the changes in the genome but they go through the selection process. Those that work are conserved those that are a disaster fail to reproduce.
It takes BOTH mutation and selection to drive evolution. Without mutation there is nothing to select from. It is not that culture has nothing to do with evolution its that you overstate the case for culture over mutations.
And a goodly hunk of the cultural effects are actually disease effects that were enhanced by increased communication between various groups. Without long distance trade many diseases would never have left their area of origin.
Ethelred
Your math assumes a continuous long-time probability. If that is visible even by looking at small intervals of time, that regularity opposes yet another evolutionist lore, namely "punctuated-equilibrium." Keep in mind that, they had to come up with that PE theory, because of the gaps (constancies, then spurts) in the fossil records. When looking into seas (such as Tiktaalik), a "transitional"-looking something might sound something, but when the rock strata of fossils show sophitication-over-time, but with gaps, then you have to make something with that data. Creationists take that as evidence for instantaneous-creation, while evolutionists think that as "punctuated-equilibrium." But you deny both, if you would assume that regular mutation rate. (Perhaps, you would believe that fossils reflect only after a threshold of gene changes. Or, point out that molecular analyses are not entirely in agreement with fossils, http://www.physor...477.html )
Furthermore, if you would assume such a constant rate of probability for all nature, then the first fossil that you would find of old monkeys which might be similar to a current monkey, would refute your hypothesis. Otherwise, you would be suggesting that, monkeys threw all-tails, while humans threw all-heads, wit that probability. 320000 tails, in a row? Wow!