Scientists at Penn State and the National Institute of Genetics in Japan have demonstrated that several statistical methods commonly used by biologists to detect natural selection at the molecular level tend to produce incorrect results. "Our finding means that hundreds of published studies on natural selection may have drawn incorrect conclusions," said Masatoshi Nei, Penn State Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and the team's leader.
The team examined the branch-site method and several types of site-prediction methods commonly used for statistical analyses of natural selection at the molecular level. The branch-site method enables scientists to determine whether or not natural selection has occurred within a particular gene, and the site-prediction method allows scientists to predict the exact location on a gene in which natural selection has occurred.
"Both of these methods are very popular among biologists because they appear to give valuable results about which genes have undergone natural selection," said Nei. "But neither of the methods seems to give an accurate picture of what's really going on."
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