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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2002-03 > 1015105920


From: "John F. Chandler" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Results Comments?
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 16:52 EST
In-Reply-To: agleason@route66web.com message <3C8052D6.11842575@route66web.com> of Fri, 1 Mar 2002 21:19:30 -0700


I wrote:
> mutation mechanism for STR markers were strongly biased in favor of
> *increasing* the repeat counts, then it could be said that a value of
> 20 for DYS390 is more "ancient" than a value of 24, but that is not
> established.

Allan asked for an explanation. It has been suggested more than once
that STR mutations are preferentially an increase in the number of
repeats, rather than a decrease. However, no one has published any
definitive study to show whether this idea is true or false. If I
remember correctly, the report on father-son differences did have an
excess of increases over decreases, but the statistics were too few
to make anything of that.

John Chandler

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