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Science 5 April 1996:
Vol. 272. no. 5258, p. 9
DOI:

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This Week in Science

Mutations of DNA in the wild provide the groundwork for evolution. Because DNA is replicated in a continuous manner on the leading strand, and discontinuously on the lagging strand by the synthesis and joining of Okazaki fragments, it has been suggested that mutations might more easily accumulate in the lagging strand. Francino et al. (p. 107) have examined the prevalence of mutations on the leading and lagging strands of multiple genes in natural strains of Escherichia coli and Salmonella. They find no difference in mutation rates on the leading and lagging strands; instead they find that the coding strand had more C to T substitutions than the noncoding strand. These differences may imply that transcription-coupled repair took care of DNA damage on the transcribed (noncoding) strand.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)