Fitness loss through spontaneous mutations will not impact viability of human populations in the near future

Spontaneous mutations tend to reduce fitness in populations of living organisms, but this erosion of fitness is countered by natural selection. This study uses the first mutation accumulation experiment in a mammal to show that even in the absence of natural selection, the rate of fitness loss should not be of concern, which is reassuring for humans.

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In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology:   http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002795

Article Title: An estimate of fitness reduction from mutation accumulation in a mammal allows assessment of the consequences of relaxed selection

Author Countries: United Kingdom, Germany

Funding: This project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research And Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement no. 694212 to PDK). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.