Refine
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (2)
Document Type
- Journal article (2)
Language
- English (2)
Keywords
- evolutionary genetics (1)
- genome annotation (1)
- genome assembly (1)
- genomics (1)
- mitochondrial genome (1)
- molecular evolution (1)
- topminnow (1)
- transposable elements (1)
Institute
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.