Allometric scaling of somatic mutation and epimutation rates in trees

How long-lived trees escape “mutational meltdown” despite centuries of continuous growth remains puzzling. Here we integrate recent studies to show that the yearly rate of somatic mutations and epimutations (μ Y ) scales inversely with generation time (G), and follows the same allometric power law found in mammals (μ Y ∝G -1 ). Deeper insights into the scaling function will permit predictions of somatic (epi)mutation rates from life-history traits without the need for genomic data.