June 15, 2014



DOI: 10.1126/science.344.6189.1272

Strong male bias drives germline mutation in chimpanzees

Oliver Venn





eurologist said...

Had the authors used the much more logical mutation rate by age (rather than generation), there may not have been any significant discrepancy between humans and chimps.

Autosomal mutations have long been known to be dominated by males, and thus by age, and not by generation.

Apes' generation length is much shorter, so the fallacy of using generation length rather than age is even more consequential regarding this completely unscientific result, with them.

andrew said...

The relative male v. female contribution to mutations isn't all that different. In humans males are also grossly disproportionately the source of mutations. In humans, 85% of mutations are male in origin.

The 90% rate for chimps, given the margin of error in both the human and chimp measurements, may not even be a statistically significant difference.