Talk:Mutation accumulation experiments

Some suggestions

Here is a quick review and some suggestions in order of decreasing importance Dabs (talk) 16:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

• the description of the method given here is mistakenly tied to sexual organisms. MA approaches are applied to bacteria: one simply maintains a population and bottle-necks periodically. Describe the application to bacteria and explain how it differs.
• the perspective is a bit idiosyncratic, based on just a few sources, e.g., the link to sexual reproduction just noted, or the claim that MA experiments are typically used to estimate mutational effects on trait values. The emphasis of MA methods has long been on fitness and genomic mutation rates, i.e., estimating the total rate, the total deleterious rate, and the shape of the distribution of fitness effects. More recent work focuses on the spectrum of mutation rates. For a broader entree to this topic, see Katju and Bergthorsson or Kondrashov and Kondrashov (2010). An explanation of the history and uses of MA experiments would benefit from some context on why measuring mutation rates used to be so hard, and why deep sequencing approaches are taking over, per Kondrashov and Kondrashov (2010). Describe MA experiments more broadly, identifying historic and current uses, and link to wikipedia content on mutation bias, Mutation#Distribution_of_fitness_effects_(DFE), and Mutation rate
• The explanation also would benefit from a compare-and-contrast with methods to estimate mutation rates and spectra that do not rely on mutation-accumulation lines, e.g., reporter genes (obsolete), trio sequencing, deep mutational scanning (for the DFE). Add a few sentences comparing MA methods with other methods for assaying the mutation rate or the DFE
• the article is long for the amount of material covered. Remove redundancies and refer the reader to other wikipedia sources as appropriate.
• detailed reporting on mutation rates (the outcome of a MA experiment) is not necessary here given the separate article on mutation rate. Prune down the section on mutation rates to give illustrative results only.
• It might be helpful to indicate how frequently the MA method has been applied, and to list a few historic or important MA experiments such as Mukai's 1964 study with Drosophila. A recent phylogenetic survey identifies 138 MA experiments in eukaryotes. Add comments indicating how broadly the MA method has been used, and list a few influential historic or recent studies
• an interesting technical point is that selection can't be avoided entirely, but it may be possible to correct mathematically for its effects on estimates of mutation rates, per Wahl and Agashe, 2022 (see also Conradson, et al

Wikipedia-specific stuff Dabs (talk) 16:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

• disambiguate the Mutation theory of aging which is often called "mutation accumulation" or "the mutation accumulation theory" of aging after Medawar
• the contents of a very short wikipedia article on the Bateman-Mukai method should be integrated here and that article should be deleted

Dabs (talk) 16:58, 27 January 2023 (UTC)