Scaling and hierarchical structures in DNA sequences

Phys Rev Lett. 2004 Aug 13;93(7):078103. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.078103. Epub 2004 Aug 13.

Abstract

A method of analyzing DNA correlation structure is introduced. Density fluctuations of nucleotides are shown to display an extended self-similarity scaling when the scale varies between 100 and 8000 base pairs. The scaling is accurately described by a hierarchical structure model of She and Leveque [Phys. Rev. Lett. 72, 336 (1994)]]. The derived model parameter beta is able to quantify moderately large-scale correlations which exist in a true DNA sequence but are absent in its randomly shuffled sequence and in a simulated model sequence by an evolution model of Hsieh et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, (2003)]]. Finally, it is shown that beta varies with the evolution category and measures the organizational complexity of the genome.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Biophysical Phenomena
  • Biophysics
  • Chromosomes / ultrastructure
  • DNA / chemistry*
  • Databases as Topic
  • Genes, Fungal
  • Humans
  • Nucleic Acid Conformation*

Substances

  • DNA