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The Ratio of Nonsynonymous to Synonymous Substitution as a Test of Selection

The second constraint number the seed paper reports for ABCC9 is dN/dS = 0.126. It measures something different from LOEUF — pressure across species over deep time, not depletion within our species — and conflating the two is the standard error.

Questions this Concept answers

Why are synonymous substitutions used as the denominator in this ratio?

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Calculating dN/dS to Detect Natural Selection in Genetics

The dN/dS ratio is a molecular evolution statistic used to detect natural selection acting on protein-coding genes by comparing the rate of non-synonymous nucleotide substitutions (dN, changes that a…