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Updated: Feb 17, 2026

Studying Age-dependent Genomic Instability using the S. cerevisiae Chronological Lifespan Model
Published on: September 29, 2011
Low number of fixed somatic mutations in a long-lived oak tree
Emanuel Schmid-Siegert1, Namrata Sarkar2,3,4, Christian Iseli1
1Vital-IT Competence Center, Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Abstract:
Because plants do not possess a defined germline, deleterious somatic mutations can be passed to gametes, and a large number of cell divisions separating zygote from gamete formation may lead to many mutations in long-lived plants. We sequenced the genome of two terminal branches of a 234-year-old oak tree and found several fixed somatic single-nucleotide variants whose sequential appearance in the tree could be traced along nested sectors of younger branches. Our data suggest that stem cells of shoot meristems in trees are robustly protected from the accumulation of mutations.
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