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by cosmojg 1145 days ago
Rates of Spontaneous Mutation (Drake et al., 1998)[1] says that a human's genome accumulates around ~64 new mutations per generation through meiosis alone. Those mutations are propagated into every cell of the newborn baby. Over a lifespan, all cells in the body will mutate at a rate proportional to their division rate, leading to thousands upon thousands[2] of uncorrected mutations per individual, among the trillions which are ultimately corrected by DNA polymerase[3].

[1] https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/148.4.1667

[2] https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-022-04618-z

[3] https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaf9011