Nucleotide Substitution: Rate of

Wen‐Hsiung Li, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Published online: July 2006

DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0005109

The rate of nucleotide substitution in a DNA sequence is defined as the number of nucleotide substitutions per site per unit time. It is a basic quantity in the study of DNA sequence evolution.

Keywords: nucleotide substitution; rate of evolution

Figure 1. Divergence of two sequences. Sequences 1 and 2 were derived from a common ancestral sequence t years ago.
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 References
    book Li WH (1997) Molecular Evolution. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.

Related Sub-Topics:

Molecular Evolution | Protein Evolution | Evolution Rates | Evolution of Coding and Functional Modules
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Article Title: Nucleotide Substitution: Rate of
 
How to Cite close
Li, Wen‐Hsiung(Jul 2006) Nucleotide Substitution: Rate of. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1038/npg.els.0005109]