We're All Mutants: The Average Human Has 60 New Genetic Mutations

[Curlymoe115]

By Natalie Wolchover, Life’s Little Mysteries Staff Writer

LiveScience.com | LiveScience.com – Thu, 16 Jun, 2011

When parents pass their genes down to their children, an average of 60 errors are introduced to the genetic code in the process, according to a new study. Any of those five dozen mutations could be the source of major differences in a person’s appearance or behavior as compared to his or her parents — and altogether, the mistakes are the driving force of evolution.

Sixty mutations may sound like a lot, but according to the international team of geneticists behind the new research, it is actually fewer than expected. “We had previously estimated that parents would contribute an average of 100 to 200 mistakes to their child,” Philip Awadella, a geneticist at the University of Montreal who co-led the project, said in a press release. “Our genetic study, the first of its kind, shows that actually much fewer mistakes, or mutations, are made.”

That means human evolution happens more slowly than they previously thought.

The researchers analyzed the complete genetic sequences of two families that had previously been collected as part of the 1,000 Genomes Project. They looked for new mutations present in the children’s DNA that were absent from their parents’ genomes. “Like very small needles in a very large haystack,” Awadalla said, there was only one new mutation in every 100 million letters of DNA. [Read:How to Speak Genetics]

The number of mutations that came from each parent was drastically different in the two different families. In one family, 92 percent of the mutations in the child’s genes derived from the father, whereas in the other family, 64 percent came from the mother.

“This was a surprise: many people expected that in all families, most mutations would come from the father, due to the additional number of times that the genome needs to be copied to make a sperm, as opposed to an egg,” said Matt Hurles, of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the U.K. More work must be done to explain the disparity.

The new techniques and algorithms developed for the research, which is detailed in the latest issue of Nature Genetics, can be used in the future to answer additional questions. For example, how does a parent’s age affect the number of mutations passed to his or her offspring? How do their various environmental exposures impact mutation rates?

Geneticists will find out by comparing the number of new mutations in children born to parents of differing ages and life experiences.

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[Anonymous]

I’ve been sending the spammer’s member names through the feedback form (I’ll do it now). If it’s a new posting, I also tag the post SPAM. It gets passed on fairly quickly and the spammer gets turfed. We’re pretty lucky, not much of this happens here as far as I’ve seen, and the moderators get to it fairly quickly (not on weekends) and acknowledge my feedback.

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[memzak]

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[Anonymous]

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[Curlymoe115]

What we need is a report button on posts.

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[Anonymous]

curly a I agree a report button is needed! spam is a ADHDers nightmare and a marketers dream!

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[Anonymous]

My problem is I am so clumsy that sometimes I hit the report button when I mean to hit the reply button (you know, they start with the same three letters and I am a bit visually dyslexic, I think).

So while we’re at it, could we please have an UNDO button. It could be time-sensitive, like, you have 1 minute to delete this post 😮

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[nellie]

But we have a report button – right next to the Posted xx hours ago. There’s also an edit link for about an hour after you post so you can edit your posts. After a while it switches to report.

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[Anonymous]

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