Statistical analysis of DNA sequences. II

✍ Scribed by Alexander Vilenkin; Lev Verkh

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 163 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0006-3525
• DOI: 10.1002/bip.360210817

✦ Synopsis

A DNA molecule can be viewed as a text written in four letters: A, T, G, and C. As we know, this text contains the genetic message of a living organism. The sequence of letters in the text cannot be very regular (otherwise it would carry very little information). To an observer who does not know the "language," an efficiently coded text appears to be an almost random sequence of letters. On the other hand, one can expect important differences between the texts and random sequences. In particular, DNA segments code for proteins and are "written" in three-letter "words" (codons)-their presence can result in some correlations in the sequence. In the present communication, we confirm this expectation by a quantitative analysis of some recently determined DNA sequences.1-3 It will be shown that statistical analysis can determine the presence and the length of the "words.