An Explanation of Exceptions from Chargaff's Second Parity Rule/Strand Symmetry of DNA Molecules

Genes (Basel). 2022 Oct 23;13(11):1929. doi: 10.3390/genes13111929.

Abstract

In this article, we show that mono/oligonucleotide quadruplets, as basic structures of DNA, along with our classification of trinucleotides, disclose an organization of genomes based on purine-pyrimidine symmetry. Moreover, the structure and stability of DNA are influenced by the Watson-Crick pairing and the natural law of DNA creation and conservation, according to which the same mono- or oligonucleotide insertion must be inserted simultaneously into both strands of DNA. Taken together, they lead to quadruplets with central mirror symmetry and bidirectional DNA strand orientation and are incorporated into Chargaff's second parity rule (CSPR). Performing our quadruplet frequency analysis of all human chromosomes and of Neuroblastoma BreakPoint Family (NBPF) genes, which code Olduvai protein domains in the human genome, we show that the coding part of DNA violates CSPR. This may shed new light and give rise to a novel hypothesis on DNA creation and its evolution. In this framework, the logarithmic relationship between oligonucleotide order and minimal DNA sequence length, to establish the validity of CSPR, automatically follows from the quadruplet structure of the genomic sequence. The problem of the violation of CSPR in rare symbionts is discussed.

Keywords: DNA quadruplets; DNA symmetries; Neuroblastoma BreakPoint Family genes; coding DNA; human chromosomes; noncoding DNA; trinucleotide classification.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Base Composition
  • DNA* / chemistry
  • DNA* / genetics
  • Genome, Human*
  • Oligonucleotides

Substances

  • DNA
  • Oligonucleotides

Grants and funding

This work was fully supported by the Croatian Science Foundation under project IP 2019 04 2757.