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Science 18 February 2000:
Vol. 287. no. 5456, pp. 1283 - 1286
DOI: 10.1126/science.287.5456.1283
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Reports

Evidence for a High Frequency of Simultaneous Double-Nucleotide Substitutions

Michalis Averof, 1* Antonis Rokas, 2 Kenneth H. Wolfe, 3 Paul M. Sharp 4*

Point mutations are generally assumed to involve changes of single nucleotides. Nevertheless, the nature and known mechanisms of mutation do not exclude the possibility that several adjacent nucleotides may change simultaneously in a single mutational event. Two independent approaches are used here to estimate the frequency of simultaneous double-nucleotide substitutions. The first examines switches between TCN and AGY (where N is any nucleotide and Y is a pyrimidine) codons encoding absolutely conserved serine residues in a number of proteins from diverse organisms. The second reveals double-nucleotide substitutions in primate noncoding sequences. These two complementary approaches provide similar high estimates for the rate of doublet substitutions, on the order of 0.1 per site per billion years.

1 Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB)-FORTH, Vassilika Vouton, 711 10 Iraklio, Crete, Greece.
2 Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JT, UK.
3 Department of Genetics, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
4 Institute of Genetics, University of Nottingham, Queens Medical Centre, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: averof{at}imbb.forth.gr (M.A.) or paul{at}evol.nott.ac.uk (P.M.S.)

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