234-Year-Old Tree Has Impressively Stable Genome

Genomic analysis of an oak tree that lived during Napoleon’s time supports the idea that plants somehow avoid the accumulation of mutations in their stem cells.

Written byJef Akst

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a 234-year-old oak tree on the University of Lausanne campus in Switzerland has relatively few mutations.WIKIMEDIA, ABADDON1337Update (December 4): This study was published today in Nature Plants.

Sequencing DNA collected from leaves on different branches of a 234-year-old oak tree on the University of Lausanne campus in Switzerland, plant biologist Philippe Reymond and colleagues found far fewer single base-pair substitutions than expected based on known plant mutations rates and the number of cell divisions that presumed to have occurred between an old branch near the tree’s base and a younger branch 40 meters higher up. The team, which did not analyze other types of genetic mutations such as deletions, published its results last week (June 13) on the preprint server bioRxiv.

“It’s a tantalizing study,” Daniel Schoen, a plant evolutionary biologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, tells Nature. “It touches on something that was simmering always, in the back of the ...

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Meet the Author

Jef Akst
Jef (an unusual nickname for Jennifer) got her master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses. After four years of diving off the Gulf Coast of Tampa and performing behavioral experiments at the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, she left research to pursue a career in science writing. As The Scientist's managing editor, Jef edited features and oversaw the production of the TS Digest and quarterly print magazine. In 2022, her feature on uterus transplantation earned first place in the trade category of the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers.
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