Measuring the prevalence of regional mutation rates: an analysis of silent substitutions in mammals, fungi, and insects.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The patterns of mutation vary both within and across genomes. It has been shown for a few mammals that mutation rates vary within the genome, while for unknown reasons, the sensu stricto yeasts have uniform rates instead. The generality of these observations has been unknown. Here we examine silent site substitutions in a more expansive set (20 mammals, 27 fungi, 4 insects) to determine why some genomes demonstrate this mosaic distribution and why others are uniform.

Results

We applied several intragene and intergene correlation tests to measure regional substitution patterns. Assuming that silent sites are a reasonable approximation to neutrally mutating sequence, our results show that all multicellular eukaryotes exhibit mutational heterogeneity. In striking con

SUBMITTER: Fox AK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2447844 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature