Eur. Phys. J. B 3, 271-276 (1998)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s100510050313

The effect of DNA phase structure on DNA walks

¹ Institute of Microbiology, University of Wrocław, ul. Przybyszewskiego 63/77, 51-148 Wrocław, Poland
² Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Wrocław, pl. Borna 9, 50-204 Wrocław, Poland

Corresponding authors: ^a cebrat@angband.microb.uni.wroc.pl - ^b mdudek@ift.uni.wroc.pl

Received: 8 January 1998
Accepted: 28 January 1998
Published online: 15 May 1998

Abstract

We have performed several kinds of DNA walks which often are the first steps for further analysis of DNA structure and long range correlations. The DNA walks analysing frequency of G+C versus A+T cannot indicate the coding strand while purine versus pyrimidine DNA walks or two-dimensional (A-T,G-C) DNA walks in some instances can indicate the coding strand but cannot resolve the coding frame. The modified two-dimensional (A-T,G-C) DNA walks respecting the three-nucleotide codon structure show very high correlation in nucleotide composition of DNA coding sequences. They can distinguish between coding and non-coding sequences and indicate the strand and the phase in which DNA is coding.