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Human mutation rate revealed
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090827/full/news.2009.864.html

Fathers bequeath more mutations as they age
http://www.nature.com/news/fathers-bequeath-more-mutations-as-they-age-1.11247

African neighbours divided by their genes
http://www.nature.com/news/african-neighbours-divided-by-their-genes-1.11456

Human-chimp interbreeding challenged
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090828/full/news.2009.870.html


8 posted on 09/22/2012 10:32:57 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: SunkenCiv

I’m going to try commenting on this again, since I was three quarters asleep last night when I tried to comment.

The rate of 1 change per nucleotide per billion years does not make sense.

Using the mutation rate from your first link of ~200 mutations, or 1 mutation per 30 million base pairs, per generation, and assuming 20 years per generation, that comes out to 1 mutation per 1.5 million base pairs per year. Put another way, that works out to a given nucleotide will mutate about once per 1.5 million years.

That’s a huge difference from each nucleotide mutating once per billion years.

Of course, it is really hard to talk about mutation rates without specifying exactly what is being discussed. The actual mutation rate is probably up to five times higher, if one considers that up to 80% of all fertilizations do not result in a viable human being, and a proportion of those viable human beings cannot reproduce even if they do manage to survive into adulthood.


29 posted on 09/23/2012 6:17:35 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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