Bulmer M
Department of Statistics, Oxford, UK.
J Mol Evol. 1991 Oct;33(4):305-10. doi: 10.1007/BF02102861.
It has been suggested that there may be inequalities in the types of substitution on the two DNA strands (in particular, in the frequencies of transversions from R to Y and from Y to R) due to a higher error rate on the lagging than the leading strand during replication. Reexamination of 11 kb of the beta-globin region sequenced in six primates fails to confirm this suggestion. Examination of the 73-kb beta-globin region sequenced in humans shows that the frequency of pyrimidines in different parts of this region is more variable than expected in a random sequence, but the pattern is more consistent with nonrandomness generated by DNA turnover mechanisms than with strand asymmetry due to a higher error rate on the lagging strand.