Hermann Muller on Measuring Mutation Rates

Hermann Muller on Measuring Mutation Rates.

For the pioneers of genetics, mutants were precious. Although they were extremely useful, mutants with readily detectable phenotypes were so rare that it was as impractical to measure mutation rates as to measure the average number of needles in a haystack. But Hermann Joseph Muller (with contributions from Edgar Altenburg) developed a reliable approach for assaying mutation rate. Muller’s meth...

A new twist in measuring mutation rates

The influenza virus mutates faster than we previously thought.

Letter: The role of Hermann J. Muller in the Drosophila Group.

Translation and Transcription Errors on Mutation Rates

A population of bacteria growing in a nonlimiting medium includes mutator bacteria and transient mututors defined as wild-type bacteria which, due to occasional transcription or translation errors, display a mutator phenotype. A semiquantitative theoretical analysis of the steady-state composition of an Escherichia coli population suggests that rue strong genotypic mutators produce about 3 X lo...

Optimal Mutation Rates on Static Fitness Landscpes

We study the evolution of mutation rates for an asexual population living on a static fitness landscape, consisting of multiple peaks forming an evolutionary staircase. The optimal mutation rate is found by maximizing the diffusion towards higher fitness. Surprisingly the optimal genomic copying fidelity is given by Qopt = e − 1 ln ν (where ν is the genome length), independent of all other para...