On the estimation of the rate of nucleotide substitution for the control region of human mitochondrial DNA

Abstract

To apply molecular clock for studying human evolution, the pattern of nucleotide substitution for the control region of human mtDNA was analyzed in detail. It is well known that the rate of nucleotide substitution for the control region is much higher than that for any other part of mtDNA. In this study, the higher substitution rate was attributed to the higher rate of transition-type substitution between pyrimidines within the D-loop part, whereas the rates of other types of substitution were essentially the same over the entire mtDNA molecule. Even within the control region, the rate and pattern of nucleotide substitution were different between the D-loop part and the rest. The rate and pattern for the non-D-loop part were very similar to those for fourfold-degenerate sites in the protein-coding region. In contrast, the D-loop and non-D-loop parts showed similarities in the base composition, whereas the base composition of fourfold-degenerate sites slightly different from that of the both parts of the control region. It is concluded, therefore, that the nucleotide frequencies of the control region should be used to estimate the number of substitutions (d) between the control region sequences. However, a method to verify the accuracy of the estimation of d by means of the transition/transversion (s/v) ratio was theoretically studied. It was suggested that the s/v ratio becomes constant over a wide range of d values only when the estimation of d is unbiased. On the basis of this result, the estimates of d previously obtained between human sequences were evaluated.