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A comment on A mutational timer is built into the chemistry of DNA.

Re:A mutational timer is built into the chemistry of DNA by eggie on Thursday February 01, 2018 @06:27AM (#16281066)
> certain DNA bases can shape-shift for a thousandth of a second, transiently morphing into alternative states that can allow the replication machinery to incorporate the wrong base pairs into its double helix

I find this fascinating. I had always assumed that it was the shapeshifting of the polymerase that caused replication errors. Clearly that's not the whole story!

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Re:A mutational timer is built into the chemistry of DNA by ABCLAW on Thursday February 01, 2018 @12:45PM (#16283888)
We already know the polymerase error rate is the dominant factor - Comparison between various different polymerase error rates shows differences in error rates span across a 6-7 orders of magnitude.

http://www.jbc.org/content/279/17/16895.full

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Re:A mutational timer is built into the chemistry of DNA by TuringTest on Thursday February 01, 2018 @01:07PM (#16284095)
> certain DNA bases can shape-shift for a thousandth of a second, transiently morphing into alternative states that can allow the replication machinery to incorporate the wrong base pairs into its double helix

Sounds like a race condition bug...

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