Search results for "rate heterogeneity"

Analysis of the Overdispersed Clock in the Short-Term Evolution of Hepatitis C Virus: Using the E1/E2 Gene Sequences to Infer Infection Dates in a Si…

2006

Abstract The assumption of a molecular clock for dating events from sequence information is often frustrated by the presence of heterogeneity among evolutionary rates due, among other factors, to positively selected sites. In this work, our goal is to explore methods to estimate infection dates from sequence analysis. One such method, based on site stripping for clock detection, was proposed to unravel the clocklike molecular evolution in sequences showing high variability of evolutionary rates and in the presence of positive selection. Other alternatives imply accommodating heterogeneity in evolutionary rates at various levels, without eliminating any information from the data. Here we pre…