Viruses
isolated from single necrotic lesions in Chenopodium quinoa were used to infect tobacco
plants and virions were extracted following the
appearance of symptoms (1). A region encompassing genome positions 7808
to 9437 was amplified by high-fidelity RT-PCR and 83 molecular clones were
sequenced (Ts =
4890). Only four substitutions were
observed. Using Equation 6, max[ms/n/c]
= 3 ´ 4 / 83 / 4890 = 3.0 ´ 10-5.
Another reason to consider this estimate as an upper-limit is that the
observed rate was close to the rate of RT-PCR errors.
1. Sanjuán, R., P. Agudelo-Romero,
and S. F. Elena. 2009. Upper-limit mutation rate estimation for a plant RNA
virus. Biol. Lett. 5:394-396.