Question

In Bayesian methods, difficulty with making estimations is that the estimate depends on the following Assumption. (Assumption – The mutation rate in sequences has been constant with time and that the rate of mutation of all nucleotides is the same.)

(a) True

(b) False

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

Enquiry is from Bayesian Statistics in division Sequence Alignment of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Correct answer is (a) True

The explanation is: The assumption mentioned above (the molecular clock hypothesis) is made to reduce the complications. Such problems may be solved by scoring different portions of a sequence with a different scoring matrix, and then using the above Bayesian methods to calculate the best evolutionary distance.