Summary
A comparison of the mRNAs for rabbit and humanβ-hemoglobins shows that synonymous changes in codons have accumulated three times as rapidly as nucleotide replacements that produced changes in amino acids. This agrees with predictions based on the so-called ‘neutral theory’. In addition, seven codon changes that appear to be single-base changes (according to ‘maximum parsimony’) are actually two-base changes. This indicates that the construction of “primordial sequences” is of limited significance when based on inferences that assume minimum base changes for amino acid replacements.
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Jukes, T.H. Neutral changes during divergent evolution of hemoglobins. J Mol Evol 11, 267–269 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01734488
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01734488