Statistical analysis of post mortem DNA damage-derived miscoding lesions in Neandertal mitochondrial DNA.

ABSTRACT:

Background

We have analysed the distribution of post mortem DNA damage derived miscoding lesions from the datasets of seven published Neandertal specimens that have extensive cloned sequence coverage over the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) hypervariable region 1 (HVS1). The analysis was restricted to C-->T and G-->A miscoding lesions (the predominant manifestation of post mortem damage) that are seen at a frequency of more than one clone among sequences from a single PCR, but do not represent the true endogenous sequence.

Findings

The data indicates an extreme bias towards C-->T over G-->A miscoding lesions (observed ratio of 67:2 compared to an expected ratio of 7:2), implying that the mtDNA Light strand molecule suffers proportionally more damage-derived miscoding lesions than

SUBMITTER: Vives S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2547106 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature