TY  - JOUR
A1  - Sendell-Price, Ashley T.
A1  - Tulenko, Frank J.
A1  - Pettersson, Mats
A1  - Kang, Du
A1  - Montandon, Margo
A1  - Winkler, Sylke
A1  - Kulb, Kathleen
A1  - Naylor, Gavin P.
A1  - Phillippy, Adam
A1  - Fedrigo, Olivier
A1  - Mountcastle, Jacquelyn
A1  - Balacco, Jennifer R.
A1  - Dutra, Amalia
A1  - Dale, Rebecca E.
A1  - Haase, Bettina
A1  - Jarvis, Erich D.
A1  - Myers, Gene
A1  - Burgess, Shawn M.
A1  - Currie, Peter D.
A1  - Andersson, Leif
A1  - Schartl, Manfred
T1  - Low mutation rate in epaulette sharks is consistent with a slow rate of evolution in sharks
JF  - Nature Communications
N2  - Sharks occupy diverse ecological niches and play critical roles in marine ecosystems, often acting as apex predators. They are considered a slow-evolving lineage and have been suggested to exhibit exceptionally low cancer rates. These two features could be explained by a low nuclear mutation rate. Here, we provide a direct estimate of the nuclear mutation rate in the epaulette shark (Hemiscyllium ocellatum). We generate a high-quality reference genome, and resequence the whole genomes of parents and nine offspring to detect de novo mutations. Using stringent criteria, we estimate a mutation rate of 7×10\(^{−10}\) per base pair, per generation. This represents one of the lowest directly estimated mutation rates for any vertebrate clade, indicating that this basal vertebrate group is indeed a slowly evolving lineage whose ability to restore genetic diversity following a sustained population bottleneck may be hampered by a low mutation rate.
KW  - evolutionary genetics
KW  - genomics
KW  - molecular evolution
Y1  - 2023
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-357827
VL  - 14
ER  -