Abstract
Mutations are the primary source of all genetic variation. Knowledge
about their rates is critical for any evolutionary genetic analyses, but
for a long time, that knowledge has remained elusive and indirectly
inferred. In recent years, parent-offspring comparisons have yielded the
first direct mutation rate estimates. Here, we estimated the mutation
rate for the guppy (Poecilia reticulata), a model species in
ecoevolutionary studies. We sequenced 4 parents and 20 offspring and
screened their genomes for de novo mutations. The initial large number
of candidate de novo mutations was analysed with a supervised
machine learning approach to remove false-positive results.
Additionally, candidate de novo mutations were validated using Sanger
sequencing, and positively verified variants were used to estimate the
mutation rate. The guppy mutation rate (µ = 3.44 × 10-9 per site per
generation) is among the lowest directly estimated mutation rates in
vertebrates. Similarly, low estimates were obtained for two other
teleost fishes. We discuss potential explanations for such a pattern, as
well as the utility of machine-learning approaches for standardized
across experiments approach to estimate mutation rates.