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Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences :... Dec 2016The remarkable capacity of some viruses to adapt to new hosts and environments is highly dependent on their ability to generate de novo diversity in a short period of... (Review)
Review
The remarkable capacity of some viruses to adapt to new hosts and environments is highly dependent on their ability to generate de novo diversity in a short period of time. Rates of spontaneous mutation vary amply among viruses. RNA viruses mutate faster than DNA viruses, single-stranded viruses mutate faster than double-strand virus, and genome size appears to correlate negatively with mutation rate. Viral mutation rates are modulated at different levels, including polymerase fidelity, sequence context, template secondary structure, cellular microenvironment, replication mechanisms, proofreading, and access to post-replicative repair. Additionally, massive numbers of mutations can be introduced by some virus-encoded diversity-generating elements, as well as by host-encoded cytidine/adenine deaminases. Our current knowledge of viral mutation rates indicates that viral genetic diversity is determined by multiple virus- and host-dependent processes, and that viral mutation rates can evolve in response to specific selective pressures.
Topics: Genome, Viral; Mutation; Mutation Rate; Recombination, Genetic; Virus Replication; Viruses
PubMed: 27392606
DOI: 10.1007/s00018-016-2299-6 -
Microbiology (Reading, England) Nov 2023Genetic mutation, which provides the raw material for evolutionary adaptation, is largely a stochastic force. However, there is ample evidence showing that mutations can... (Review)
Review
Genetic mutation, which provides the raw material for evolutionary adaptation, is largely a stochastic force. However, there is ample evidence showing that mutations can also exhibit strong biases, with some mutation types and certain genomic positions mutating more often than others. It is becoming increasingly clear that mutational bias can play a role in determining adaptive outcomes in bacteria in both the laboratory and the clinic. As such, understanding the causes and consequences of mutation bias can help microbiologists to anticipate and predict adaptive outcomes. In this review, we provide an overview of the mechanisms and features of the bacterial genome that cause mutational biases to occur. We then describe the environmental triggers that drive these mechanisms to be more potent and outline the adaptive scenarios where mutation bias can synergize with natural selection to define evolutionary outcomes. We conclude by describing how understanding mutagenic genomic features can help microbiologists predict areas sensitive to mutational bias, and finish by outlining future work that will help us achieve more accurate evolutionary forecasts.
Topics: Mutation; Mutagenesis; Bacteria; Bias; Biological Evolution
PubMed: 37943288
DOI: 10.1099/mic.0.001404 -
Genes & Genetic Systems Apr 2019Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has been used to determine the reference sequences of model organisms. This allows us to identify mutations by the chromosome number and... (Review)
Review
Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has been used to determine the reference sequences of model organisms. This allows us to identify mutations by the chromosome number and sequence position where the base sequence has been altered, independent of any phenotypic alteration. Because the re-sequencing method by NGS covers all of the genome, it enables detection of the small number of spontaneous de novo germline mutations that occur in the reproductive lineage. The spontaneous mutation rate varies depending on the environment; for example, it increases when 8-oxoguanine accumulates. If the mutation rate (per replication) is greater than 1/genome size (2n), at least one mutation would generally occur in each cell division on average, producing cells with a different genome from the parent cell. Organisms with larger genomes and more divisions by cells in the reproductive lineage are expected to show higher mutation rates per generation, if the mutation rate per replication is constant among species. The accumulation of mutations that arose in the genome of ancestor cells has resulted in heterogeneity and diversity among extant species. In this sense, the ability to produce mutations in cells of the reproductive lineage can be considered as a key feature of organisms, even if mutations also present an unavoidable risk.
Topics: Animals; Cell Lineage; Germ Cells; Germ-Line Mutation; Humans; Mutation Rate
PubMed: 30905890
DOI: 10.1266/ggs.18-00055 -
Microbiology (Reading, England) May 2023Natural selection is commonly assumed to act on extensive standing genetic variation. Yet, accumulating evidence highlights the role of mutational processes creating...
Natural selection is commonly assumed to act on extensive standing genetic variation. Yet, accumulating evidence highlights the role of mutational processes creating this genetic variation: to become evolutionarily successful, adaptive mutants must not only reach fixation, but also emerge in the first place, i.e. have a high enough mutation rate. Here, we use numerical simulations to investigate how mutational biases impact our ability to observe rare mutational pathways in the laboratory and to predict outcomes in experimental evolution. We show that unevenness in the rates at which mutational pathways produce adaptive mutants means that most experimental studies lack power to directly observe the full range of adaptive mutations. Modelling mutation rates as a distribution, we show that a substantially larger target size ensures that a pathway mutates more commonly. Therefore, we predict that commonly mutated pathways are conserved between closely related species, but not rarely mutated pathways. This approach formalizes our proposal that most mutations have a lower mutation rate than the average mutation rate measured experimentally. We suggest that the extent of genetic variation is overestimated when based on the average mutation rate.
Topics: Mutation Rate; Mutation; Selection, Genetic
PubMed: 37134005
DOI: 10.1099/mic.0.001323 -
Nature Biotechnology Feb 2016Mutational hotspots indicate selective pressure across a population of tumor samples, but their prevalence within and across cancer types is incompletely characterized....
Mutational hotspots indicate selective pressure across a population of tumor samples, but their prevalence within and across cancer types is incompletely characterized. An approach to detect significantly mutated residues, rather than methods that identify recurrently mutated genes, may uncover new biologically and therapeutically relevant driver mutations. Here, we developed a statistical algorithm to identify recurrently mutated residues in tumor samples. We applied the algorithm to 11,119 human tumors, spanning 41 cancer types, and identified 470 somatic substitution hotspots in 275 genes. We find that half of all human tumors possess one or more mutational hotspots with widespread lineage-, position- and mutant allele-specific differences, many of which are likely functional. In total, 243 hotspots were novel and appeared to affect a broad spectrum of molecular function, including hotspots at paralogous residues of Ras-related small GTPases RAC1 and RRAS2. Redefining hotspots at mutant amino acid resolution will help elucidate the allele-specific differences in their function and could have important therapeutic implications.
Topics: Algorithms; Computational Biology; DNA Mutational Analysis; Humans; Mutation; Neoplasms
PubMed: 26619011
DOI: 10.1038/nbt.3391 -
Legal Medicine (Tokyo, Japan) Sep 2022The short tandem repeats (STRs) or microsatellites are used for paternity testing and these sequences mutate more rapidlythanbulkDNAsequences. A total of 746 paternity...
The short tandem repeats (STRs) or microsatellites are used for paternity testing and these sequences mutate more rapidlythanbulkDNAsequences. A total of 746 paternity cases were analysed to understand the mutation rate of 21 autosomal STR loci. We identified 41 mutations in 11 STR Loci with a maximum at SE33. No mutations occurred in the remaining 10 STR loci. The overall average mutation rate was estimated as 0.004523 and the estimated locus-specific mutation rate varied between 0.001214 and 0.016990. Among these 90.24% was accounted for single-step mutation, 2.44% for two steps, and 7.32 % for three or muti steps. The obtained data is crucial and could be helpful for ensuring the accuracy of DNA testing and interpretation.
Topics: DNA; Humans; Microsatellite Repeats; Mutation; Mutation Rate; Paternity
PubMed: 35526480
DOI: 10.1016/j.legalmed.2022.102080 -
Nature Reviews. Molecular Cell Biology Mar 2010Genomic instability is a characteristic of most cancers. In hereditary cancers, genomic instability results from mutations in DNA repair genes and drives cancer... (Review)
Review
Genomic instability is a characteristic of most cancers. In hereditary cancers, genomic instability results from mutations in DNA repair genes and drives cancer development, as predicted by the mutator hypothesis. In sporadic (non-hereditary) cancers the molecular basis of genomic instability remains unclear, but recent high-throughput sequencing studies suggest that mutations in DNA repair genes are infrequent before therapy, arguing against the mutator hypothesis for these cancers. Instead, the mutation patterns of the tumour suppressor TP53 (which encodes p53), ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) and cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A (CDKN2A; which encodes p16INK4A and p14ARF) support the oncogene-induced DNA replication stress model, which attributes genomic instability and TP53 and ATM mutations to oncogene-induced DNA damage.
Topics: Animals; Ataxia Telangiectasia Mutated Proteins; Cell Cycle Proteins; Cyclin-Dependent Kinase Inhibitor p16; DNA Damage; DNA-Binding Proteins; Genomic Instability; Humans; Models, Biological; Mutation; Neoplasms; Protein Serine-Threonine Kinases; Tumor Suppressor Protein p53; Tumor Suppressor Proteins
PubMed: 20177397
DOI: 10.1038/nrm2858 -
Genetics Mar 2022Genetic background often influences the phenotypic consequences of mutations, resulting in variable expressivity. How standing genetic variants collectively cause this...
Genetic background often influences the phenotypic consequences of mutations, resulting in variable expressivity. How standing genetic variants collectively cause this phenomenon is not fully understood. Here, we comprehensively identify loci in a budding yeast cross that impact the growth of individuals carrying a spontaneous missense mutation in the nuclear-encoded mitochondrial ribosomal gene MRP20. Initial results suggested that a single large effect locus influences the mutation's expressivity, with 1 allele causing inviability in mutants. However, further experiments revealed this simplicity was an illusion. In fact, many additional loci shape the mutation's expressivity, collectively leading to a wide spectrum of mutational responses. These results exemplify how complex combinations of alleles can produce a diversity of qualitative and quantitative responses to the same mutation.
Topics: Alleles; Genetic Background; Humans; Mutation; Phenotype
PubMed: 35078232
DOI: 10.1093/genetics/iyac013 -
Journal of Applied Genetics Aug 2018Precise pre-mRNA splicing, essential for appropriate protein translation, depends on the presence of consensus "cis" sequences that define exon-intron boundaries and... (Review)
Review
Precise pre-mRNA splicing, essential for appropriate protein translation, depends on the presence of consensus "cis" sequences that define exon-intron boundaries and regulatory sequences recognized by splicing machinery. Point mutations at these consensus sequences can cause improper exon and intron recognition and may result in the formation of an aberrant transcript of the mutated gene. The splicing mutation may occur in both introns and exons and disrupt existing splice sites or splicing regulatory sequences (intronic and exonic splicing silencers and enhancers), create new ones, or activate the cryptic ones. Usually such mutations result in errors during the splicing process and may lead to improper intron removal and thus cause alterations of the open reading frame. Recent research has underlined the abundance and importance of splicing mutations in the etiology of inherited diseases. The application of modern techniques allowed to identify synonymous and nonsynonymous variants as well as deep intronic mutations that affected pre-mRNA splicing. The bioinformatic algorithms can be applied as a tool to assess the possible effect of the identified changes. However, it should be underlined that the results of such tests are only predictive, and the exact effect of the specific mutation should be verified in functional studies. This article summarizes the current knowledge about the "splicing mutations" and methods that help to identify such changes in clinical diagnosis.
Topics: Algorithms; Computational Biology; Computer Simulation; DNA Mutational Analysis; Exons; Genetic Diseases, Inborn; Humans; Introns; Mutation; Point Mutation; Pyrimidine Nucleotides; RNA Splice Sites; RNA Splicing
PubMed: 29680930
DOI: 10.1007/s13353-018-0444-7 -
Neoplasma 2017Colorectal cancer is the 4th most common cause of cancer related deaths worldwide and new possibilities in accurate diagnosis and targeted treatment are highly required.... (Review)
Review
Colorectal cancer is the 4th most common cause of cancer related deaths worldwide and new possibilities in accurate diagnosis and targeted treatment are highly required. Mutations in adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) gene play a pivotal role in adenoma-carcinoma pathway of colorectal tumorigenesis. The quarter century from its´ first cloning, APC became one of the most frequently mutated, known driver genes in colorectal cancer. Intensive routine molecular testing of APC has brought the benefits for patients with family history of polyposis or colorectal cancer. Nevertheless, multiple mutational disease-causing mechanisms make the genetic testing still challenging. This minireview is focused on implementation of novel APC mutation screening diagnostic strategies for polyposis families according to the current findings. A further understanding and improved algorithms may help to increase the mutation detection rate. APC germline mutations achieve close to 100% penetrance, so more comprehensive approach followed by preventive and therapeutic strategies might reflect in decrease in burden of colorectal cancer.
Topics: Adenomatous Polyposis Coli Protein; Colorectal Neoplasms; DNA Mutational Analysis; Genes, APC; Germ-Line Mutation; Humans; Mutation
PubMed: 28253712
DOI: 10.4149/neo_2017_303