Inferring neutral evolution from Parkinson´s disease genes

Comparative analysis of evolutionary rates of different species provides us with informative results as to how nucleotides mutate in species with different divergence times. Relative rate test is frequently deployed to test rates of synonymous and nonsynonymous substitutions. We are interested to use the test on a set of genes which are related to the Parkinson´s Disease. Comparative genomics of human, chimp, mouse, chicken and fugu revealed most of the genes did not provide evidence of a rate heterogeneity, thereby inferring most of them are undergoing neutral or nearly neutral mutation. This allows us to get a better understanding of the evolutionary traits of genes implicated in Parkinson´s Disease.