Lin,
There are two processes operating that generate the variation we see,
mutation and selection. Mutation is thought to be random, more or less,
though mutagens vary in their specificity. So the incidence of "silent"
mutations, mutations that don't change protein sequence, could be roughly
proportional to length, if by "gene" you mean coding sequence. However, it's
clear that different genes evolve at different rates, meaning the effects of
selection are different. So I'd say no, genes evolve at different rates and
these rates aren't related to their length, meaning variation isn't directly
related to length.
Brian O.
-----Original Message-----
From: Egeria Jie-ru Lin
To: autoseq at net.bio.net
Sent: 12/16/01 6:00 PM
Subject: number of alleles of a gene
Dose anyone know
in eukaryotes, would you expect the number of alleles of a gene to be
directly related to the number of nucleotide pairs in the gene? why?
Thank you very much!
Lin
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