Impact of changes in GC content on the silent molecular clock in murids.
Details
Serval ID
serval:BIB_11E5C314FB70
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Impact of changes in GC content on the silent molecular clock in murids.
Journal
Gene
ISSN
0378-1119 (Print)
ISSN-L
0378-1119
Publication state
Published
Issued date
1997
Volume
205
Number
1-2
Pages
317-322
Language
english
Abstract
Murid nuclear genomes are more homogeneous in GC content than those of most mammals, which leads to the question of how such important compositional changes have accumulated. This paper reports on relationships between frequencies of synonymous differences and GC change, in the lineages leading to human and murids. For this, we used the four-species approach: GC changes between human and murids were compared to the frequencies of synonymous differences, measured between two independent species without GC change (bovine and pig), by using orthologous genes common to all four species. We report three conclusions: (1) Among genes with little GC change, 60% of the variability of synonymous substitution frequencies is explained by the gene-specific rate component. (2) GC changes in murid genomes are independent of the gene-specific rate component. Slowly evolving genes in pig bovine comparison can show strong GC change in murids. (3) By using a GC-independent estimate of the substitution rate, we show that GC changes in murid genomes increase synonymous substitution frequencies. The GC homogenization considerably weakens the gene-specific conservation of substitution rates in murids, and could explain part of the increase of evolutionary rates observed in this group. We present a mechanism that can account for the evolution of the GC homogenization in murids.
Keywords
Animals, Cattle, Cytosine/analysis, Evolution, Molecular, Genome, Guanine/analysis, Humans, Muridae/genetics, Muridae/physiology
Pubmed
Web of science
Create date
24/01/2008 17:47
Last modification date
20/08/2019 12:39