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From:
Subject: Re: [DNA] PubMed abstract: Gusmao study on Y-STR mutation rate
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 11:19:36 EDT
In a message dated 10/23/05 1:57:35 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
writes:
> I suppose my question is this: We have some data on what, about 100, and
> at
> least one study has suggested there at least twice that many of suitable bp
>
> length that might some day be informative. On what basis are we at all
> confident that the unstudied ones have mutation rates distributed across
> that
> range in the same proportion the ones we have studied are? Or is that
> simply an
> assumption?
>
It's an assumption, but it's the best assumption one can make unless there is
some a priori reason to suspect that the sample is biased in some way. The
more markers one tests, the more likely one is to find some outliers, however,
so there may be some special cases among the STRs not yet studied.
However, as I mentioned in a prior message, it's possible that our existing
set is already biased in favor of higher mutation rates. In the olden days,
STRs were discovered more or less accidentally. The ones most likely to be
discovered would be the ones showing up with some variation of alleles in a limited
sample of people.
Ann Turner
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