Question

Protein sequences can remain the same while the corresponding DNA sequences have more room for variation.

(a) True

(b) False

This question was addressed to me by my college director while I was bunking the class.

My enquiry is from Forms of Tree Representation in division Molecular Phylogenetics of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Right choice is (a) True

For explanation: The protein sequences can remain the same while the corresponding DNA sequences have more room for variation, especially at the third codon position. The significant difference in evolutionary rates among the three nucleotide positions also violates one of the assumptions of tree-building. In contrast, the protein sequences do not suffer from this problem, even for divergent sequences.