Variability of evolutionary rates of DNA

Abstract

A statistical analysis of DNA sequences from four nuclear loci and five mitochondrial loci from different orders of mammals is described. A major aim of the study is to describe the variation in the rate of molecular evolution of proteins and DNA. A measure of rate variability is the statistic R, the ratio of the variance in the number of substitutions to the mean number. For proteins, R is found to be in the range 0.16 less than R less than 35.55, thus extending in both directions the values seen in previous studies. An analysis of codons shows that there is a highly significant excess of double substitutions in the first and second positions, but not in the second and third or first and third positions. The analysis of the dynamics of nucleotide evolution showed that the ergodic Markov chain models that are the basis of most published formulas for correcting for multiple substitutions are incompatible with the data. A bootstrap procedure was used to show that the evolution of the individual nucleotides, even the third positions, show the same variation in rates as seen in the proteins. It is argued that protein and silent DNA evolution are uncoupled, with the evolution at both levels showing patterns that are better explained by the action of natural selection than by neutrality. This conclusion is based primarily on a comparison of the nuclear and mitochondrial results.