TY - JOUR TI - Moderate nucleotide diversity in the Atlantic herring is associated with a low mutation rate AU - Feng, Chungang AU - Pettersson, Mats AU - Lamichhaney, Sangeet AU - Rubin, Carl-Johan AU - Rafati, Nima AU - Casini, Michele AU - Folkvord, Arild AU - Andersson, Leif A2 - Przeworski, Molly VL - 6 PY - 2017 DA - 2017/06/30 SP - e23907 C1 - eLife 2017;6:e23907 DO - 10.7554/eLife.23907 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.23907 AB - The Atlantic herring is one of the most abundant vertebrates on earth but its nucleotide diversity is moderate (π = 0.3%), only three-fold higher than in human. Here, we present a pedigree-based estimation of the mutation rate in this species. Based on whole-genome sequencing of four parents and 12 offspring, the estimated mutation rate is 2.0 × 10-9 per base per generation. We observed a high degree of parental mosaicism indicating that a large fraction of these de novo mutations occurred during early germ cell development. The estimated mutation rate – the lowest among vertebrates analyzed to date – partially explains the discrepancy between the rather low nucleotide diversity in herring and its huge census population size. But a species like the herring will never reach its expected nucleotide diversity because of fluctuations in population size over the millions of years it takes to build up high nucleotide diversity. KW - mutation KW - nucleotide diversity KW - evolution JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -