https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050180
Nucleotide composition effects on the long-range correlations in human genes
1
Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal, avenue Schweitzer, 33600 Pessac Cedex, France
2
Centre de Génétique Moléculaire du CNRS (
Laboratoire associé à l'Université Pierre et Marie Curie) ,
Allée de la Terrasse,
91198 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
3
Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées, École Polytechnique,
91128 Palaiseau, France
Corresponding author: a arneodo@crpp.u-bordeaux.fr
Received:
18
August
1997
Accepted:
29
October
1997
Published online: 15 January 1998
We use the wavelet transform to investigate the fractal scaling properties of coding and noncoding human DNA sequences. We find that the strength of the long-range correlations observed in the introns increases with the guanine-cytosine (GC) content, while coding sequences show no such correlations at any GC content. However, we demonstrate that long-range correlations can be detected when the coding sequences are undersampled by retaining the third base of each codon only. This strongly suggests that the observed correlations are not likely to be due to insertion-deletion mechanisms. We comment about the origin of these correlations in terms of putative dynamical processes that could produce the isochore structure of the human genome.
PACS: 87.10.+e – General, theoretical, and mathematical biophysics (including logic of biosystems, quantum biology, and relevant aspects of thermodynamics, information theory, cybernetics, and bionics) / 05.40.+j – Fluctuation phenomena, random processes, and Brownian motion / 72.70.+m – Noise processes and phenomena
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag, 1998
