quote:
- They selectively examined exonic sequence that may be under some level of selection even in psuedogene form (which is perhaps why both guinea pig and human genes mutated to having four stop codons - to prevent unnecessary or aberrant transcripts).
Would this really explain
why the mutation happened, or just why it might have been retained?
In this case would we still not be left with the big question of why the exact same mutations happened, on many occaisions.
quote:
The research hasn't been replicated. Maybe some of the "guinea pig" sequencing reactions were contaminated with human DNA.
I have not read the AIG article, but am familiar with the results of the paper. The problem here is that the guinea pig mutations do not exactly match the human mutations.
I think 11 out of 21 sites matched and most but not all of these sites were the same changes IIRC.
If the sequencing reactions were contamninated with human DNa would we no see an exact match.