Neighboring base effects on substitution rates in pseudogenes

Abstract

Substitution rates in pseudogenes can be used to estimate the frequencies of different types of mutation on the assumption that pseudogenes are not subject to selective constraints. These rates are used here to investigate the effect of neighboring bases on mutation rates. There is a marked increase in the frequency of transitions, though not of transversions, from the doublet CG. There are also some smaller effects of neighboring bases on the frequencies of transitions from adenine and thymine. The results are used to predict dinucleotide frequencies in a stretch of DNA subject to no selective constraints and to investigate the possibility of non-randomness in the usage of stop codons.