On Fri, 14 Apr 1995, Brian Foley wrote:
> : I found in Science issue 31st March 1995 pagg.1907-1908 an interesting
> : report about Goodman's theory of slower mutation rate in humans. This idea,
>> I know there are several people who have published papers
> argueing that the "molecular clock rate" of different organisms varies as
> a function of reproductive time. That animals such as rodents with a 1
> or 2 month period between generations have a faster molecular clock than
> do primates with generation times of 3 to 30 years.
> I could not find any references at my fingertips (no MedLine
I would think that generation _time_ would be rather irrelevant (Unless
your generation time is a million years :) ). I would think that the
fact that mice have a less efficient DNA damage repair system than humans
do, for instance, and so THIS would lead to a higher "clock rate" for
them vs us, that is, sequence variations will occur at a higher rate per
replication. Correcting for more rapid generation time, the mutation
rate should itself be more important.
The clock rate for HIV, taking mutation rate into account, should then be
extremely fast.
Patrick
