TY - JOUR A1 - Smith, Nick G.C. A1 - Webster, Matthew T. A1 - Ellegren, Hans T1 - Deterministic Mutation Rate Variation in the Human Genome Y1 - 2002/09/01 JF - Genome Research JO - Genome Research SP - 1350 EP - 1356 DO - 10.1101/gr.220502 VL - 12 IS - 9 UR - http://genome.cshlp.org/content/12/9/1350.abstract N2 - Several studies of substitution rate variation have indicated that the local mutation rate varies over the mammalian genome. In the present study, we show significant variation in substitution rates within the noncoding part of the human genome using 4.7 Mb of human-chimpanzee pairwise comparisons. Moreover, we find a significant positive covariation of lineage-specific chimpanzee and human local substitution rates, and very similar mean substitution rates down the two lineages. The substitution rate variation is probably not caused by selection or biased gene conversion, and so we conclude that mutation rates vary deterministically across the noncoding nonrepetitive regions of the human genome. We also show that noncoding substitution rates are significantly affected by G+C base composition, partly because the base composition is not at equilibrium. ER -