Article View: bionet.molbio.evolution
Article #6546molecular clocks
From: Tom Holroyd
Date: Sat, 07 Sep 1991 02:12
Date: Sat, 07 Sep 1991 02:12
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>From: bashford@scripps.edu (Don &) >The question of the validity of the molecular clock is different from >the question of evolutionary bursts. Since a large proportion of DNA >bases are probably "silent" (i.e. mutations are neutral), it is >possible that genotype variation displays a meaningful and constant >rate while phenotype variation (if one had a measure of it) would >display bursts and have no meaningful rate. OK, I see the point now. The thing is, can you ever observe constant genotypic variation? Wouldn't speciation events cause unpredictable changes in the observed rate? Hmm. Maybe not, because the line that survives would continue to accumulate mutations at the same rate it had before the speciation event. I still wonder about totally neutral mutations. What would be an example? How do we know a large proportion of bases are silent? Tom Holroyd Center for Complex Systems Florida Atlantic University tomh@bambi.ccs.fau.edu
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X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 10a7a9,69df59a5019c44a0 X-Google-Attributes: gid10a7a9,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1991-09-07 06:13:38 PST Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!apple!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bionet!BAMBI.CCS.FAU.EDU!tomh From: tomh@BAMBI.CCS.FAU.EDU (Tom Holroyd) Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.evolution Subject: molecular clocks Message-ID: <9109070212.AA19281@bambi.ccs.fau.edu> Date: 7 Sep 91 02:12:08 GMT Sender: daemon@genbank.bio.net Distribution: bionet Lines: 22