Hierarchical tissue organization as a general mechanism to limit the accumulation of somatic mutations.

For species for which information is available, the number of levels across species indeed follows an increasing trend as a function of the effective population size, ranging from n =5 in humans with relatively small effective population size of ∼10 4 and correspondingly less efficient selection, n =8 in macaque with intermediate effective population size of the order of 10 5 , and n =10 in mice with the largest effective population size of ∼5 × 10 5 (refs 48 , 49 ).

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