Molecular Biology and Evolution 18:1139-1142 (2001)
© 2001 Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
LETTER |
Local Rates of Recombination Are Positively Correlated with GC Content in the Human Genome
Institute of Molecular Evolutionary Genetics, Department of Biology, Pennsylvania State University
Departamento de Genética, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The GC content of human DNA varies widely across the genome, ranging from 30% to 60%, and regions of hundreds of kilobases (often referred to as isochores [Bernardi 2000]) may have relatively homogeneous base compositions. This compositional heterogeneity appears to be very widespread in eukaryotes (Nekrutenko and Li 2000)
and may represent an important level of genome organization, insofar as gene density (Zouback, Clay, and Bernardi 1996
), gene length (Duret, Mouchiroud, and Gautier 1995
), and patterns of codon usage (Sharp et al. 1995
), as well as the distribution of different classes of repetitive elements (Soriano, Meunier-Rotival, and Bernardi 1983
; Duret, Mouchiroud, and Gautier 1995
), are all correlated with GC content. Despite intensive investigation, the underlying cause(s) of the observed heterogeneity remains contested, with two major hypotheses competing: Bernardi has suggested that selection is primarily responsible for maintaining the observed patterns (Bernardi and Bernardi 1986
;
Acknowledgements
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