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From: wrp@biochsn.acc.virginia.edu (William R. Pearson)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Bizarre DNA similarity
Message-ID: <429@hudson.acc.virginia.edu>
Date: 14 Jun 88 15:29:24 GMT
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Reply-To: wrp@biochsn.acc.Virginia.EDU (William R. Pearson)
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]about, the human Alcohol Dehydrogenase gene, and I picked an entry
]that was rather short, entry HUMADHIB, about 130 base pairs.  Then
]	He ran the comparison against all of Genbank.
]
]	The result was astounding:  the reverse complement of Human
]ADH Class I Beta, WITH those two mistakes is in 130 base pairs 100%
]similar to part of the intergenic region of pBR322.  It absolutely
]blew me away.  If someone had told me that two pieces of essentially
]unrelated DNA could be identical over 130 bases I would have said that
]they were crazy, but I saw it with my own eyes. Amazing.
]
	What you saw with your own eyes was probably a mistake in Genbank,
not a miraculous sequence similarity.  I checked the latest release
of Genbank (release 55.0), and could not find a HUMADHIB.  There were,
however, HUMADH1B[1-7], seven exons for the gene.  None of these
seven exons has any significant similarity to pbr322, in either orientation.
I suspect a piece of pbr322 crept in to Genbank in the wrong place, and
has since been removed.

Bill Pearson
wrp@virginia.EDU