>ez005139 at dino.ucdavis.edu (Daniel Mcgoldrick) writes:
> Is there any known relationship between the structure of a repeated
> DNA element such as a VNTR or microsatellite and it's mutation rate?
>> and anything else I can score off of a sequence.
SNIP
> I'm trying to construct a model that will give me an estimate
> of the usefullness of a repeat structure (as seen on a sequencing gel)
> for a certain range of divergence time that spans as many as five log
> units. Ideally, it would be cool to just look at the sequence and calculate
> "that one is informative for e.g. between 1 and 10 thousand years because
> it has fifteen repeats of 2bp that are not interrupted...."
>
> Daniel J McGoldrick
> UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory
>Dan,
First I think you should remember that even though you may think a sequence
may have some predictive/informative value for mutation rates etc... you have to
take into account position effects. Even if you have a sequence that is very repetitive
whether it recombines/slips etc may depend on the chromosomal context it is in. Unfortunately
the closer people look at DNA sequence they see that it is less and less predictive out of
context. The whole debate on dating using molecular clocks is a little up in the air now.
For example people are realizing hemoglobin in the mouse and man may be in different genomic contexts
and therefore may not mutate at the same rate, on this basis you could not use accumulation or mutations
in this locus from a common ancestral gene(s) to determine the time of divergence between the
two species...
G.
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Graham Dellaire Snail Mail:
Red Cross, Research
McGill Univeristy Montreal Blood Services
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