Estimating somatic mutation rates by Duplex Sequencing in non-model organisms: Daphnia magna as a case study

Somatic mutations are evolutionarily important as determinants of individual organismal fitness, as well as being a focus of clinical research on age-related disease, such as cancer. Identifying somatic mutations and quantifying mutation rates, however, is extremely challenging and genome-wide somatic mutation rates have only been reported for a few model organisms. Here, we describe the application of Duplex Sequencing on bottlenecked WGS libraries to quantify genome-wide somatic base substitution rates in Daphnia magna. Daphnia, historically an ecological model system, has more recently been the focus of mutation studies, in part because of its high germline mutation rates. Using our protocol and pipeline, we estimate a somatic mutation rate of 2.14 x 10-7 substitutions per site (in a genotype where the germline rate is 3.60 x 10-9 substitutions per site per generation). To obtain this estimate, we tested multiple dilution levels to maximize sequencing efficiency, and developed bioinformatic filters needed to minimize false positives when a high quality reference genome is not available. In addition to laying the groundwork for estimating genotypic variation in rates of somatic mutations within D. magna, we provide a framework for quantifying somatic mutations in other non-model systems, and also highlight recent innovations to single molecule sequencing that will help to further refine such estimates.