Evidence for purifying selection acting on silent sites in BRCA1

Reference:

Hurst, L. D. and Pal, C., 2001. Evidence for purifying selection acting on silent sites in BRCA1. Trends in Genetics, 17 (2), pp. 62-65.

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Abstract

In mammals, it is usually assumed that selection cannot be strong enough to act on nucleotide mutations that do not cause a change at the protein level (i.e. 'silent' or 'synonymous' mutations). Here we report the results of a molecular evolutionary analysis of BRCA1. We find a repeatable pronounced peak in the ratio of nonsynonymous to synonymous substitutions between codons 200-300. Unusually,this peak is caused by a plummet in the silent-site rate of evolution. The most parsimonious interpretation of these data is that purifying selection is acting on silent sites.

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