The germline mutation rate (GMR) works hand in glove with genome evolution. GMRs differ significantly across species but understanding the underpinnings of this variation remains unclear. Bergeron et al. sequenced 151 mother–father–offspring triplets from 68 different vertebrate species. Using a bespoke bioinformatics pipeline to uniformly compute species-specific GMRs, they calculated a 40-fold variation in GMR per generation between the species analyzed. Moreover, in bird and mammalian species, but not fish or reptilian species, GMRs were higher in male germlines than in female germlines. GMR variance between species was also a function of life-history traits including average generation time, fecundity, and age of sexual maturity. In findings that aligned with the drift-barrier hypothesis, higher effective population sizes correlated with lower mutation rates per generation. The authors concede that sample size was a limiting factor, but studies such as this and those that arise from it will provide much-needed glimpses of the forces that shape genomes, and the evolution of species.

种系突变率 (GMR) 与基因组进化密切相关。GMR 因物种而异，但了解这种变异的基础仍不清楚。伯杰龙等人。对来自 68 种不同脊椎动物的 151 个母亲-父亲-后代三胞胎进行了测序。使用定制的生物信息学管道统一计算物种特异性 GMR，他们计算出所分析物种之间每代的 GMR 有 40 倍的变化。此外，在鸟类和哺乳动物物种中，但在鱼类或爬行动物物种中，雄性种系的 GMR 高于雌性种系。物种之间的 GMR 差异也是生活史特征的函数，包括平均世代时间、繁殖力和性成熟年龄。在与漂移障碍假说一致的发现中，较高的有效种群规模与较低的每代突变率相关。作者承认样本量是一个限制因素，但像这样的研究和由此产生的研究将提供对塑造基因组和物种进化的力量的急需一瞥。