To estimate the relative mutation rates, we used mutation rates obtained by an analysis of processed pseudogenes [ 27, 28] and direct estimates of mutation rates derived from an analysis of mutations causing Mendelian diseases in humans [ 29].
Statistical differences in the mutation rates observed among various shuttle vector sequences were analyzed using nonparametric tests and mutation rates derived for at least three human cell clones per vector.
The phylogeny for this analysis is given in Fig. 2. Minisatellite mutation rates derived from paternity studies were significantly positively related to sexual selection, as estimated from extra-pair paternity (Fig. 3).
Using mutation rates derived from the literature and conservative biological assumptions, we show via mathematical modeling and simulations that phenotypic mutations allow evolution to select for neutral intermediate alleles of a multi-mutation trait, actually selecting for proteins whose exact DNA sequence is not in the organism under selection.
The mutation rate was derived from the number of detected mutations per number of "meioses" or transmission events, which is the number of cumulative generations tracing back to the maternal ancestor.
Direct mutation rate estimates derived from MA studies are often extrapolated to other species for evolutionary analysis; for example, MA line derived rates from C. elegans and D. melanogaster have been used for internally calibrated molecular clock based approaches to estimate divergence times among species in these two animal genera (Cutter 2008).
The focus of this paper is on optimizing the design of genetic algorithms by using an adaptive mutation rate that is derived from comparing the fitness values of successive generations.
First, the rates derived from mutation are usually calculated on a 'per generation' basis and are difficult to convert to actual time because the number of generations per year in natural populations or over evolutionary time scales is not known.
For all mutation rates tested, lineages derived from F had evolved higher fitness than those derived from R after 1000 updates (not shown).
The sequencing of the mitochondrial genomes of laboratory derived strains that were established about 100 years ago indeed suggests a 10-15 times higher mitochondrial mutation rate among such recently derived lineages, although no new mutations were found in the D-loop region [ 32].
