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The relative-rate test of the molecular clock hypothesis: a note of caution.

1989; Oxford University Press; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a040561

1537-1719

Siegfried Scherer,

Various Chemistry Research Topics

An important role in the controversy has been assigned to the relative-rate test of molecular evolution (Sarich and Wilson 1973), since it can be applied without referring to geological time (for review, see Wilson et al. 1977).This test has been used widely as ultima ratio in order to support the rateconstancy hypothesis of molecular evolution (for recent examples, see, e.g., Bledsoe 1987; Easteal 1988), although it was pointed out more than 10 years ago that the relative-rate test cannot detect changes in the evolutionary rate if proteins change their rates proportionally (Fitch 1976).In the present letter, the potential failure of the relative-rate test to support the rate-constancy hypothesis is emphasized using Cu-Zn superoxide dismutase ( SOD), since this protein has been considered to be a very poor evolutionary clock (for a detailed discussion of nine sequences, see Lee et al. 1985;