Applying signal theory to the analysis of biomolecules.
BACKGROUND
The accumulation of sequence-related and other biological data for basic research and application purposes invites disaster. It appears very likely that neither traditional thinking nor current technologies (including their foreseeable evolutionary developments) will be able to cope with this ever intensifying situation.


RESULTS
We present the detailed theoretical background for applying signal theory, as known from speech recognition and image analysis, to the analysis of biomolecules. The general scheme is as follows: biochemical and biophysical properties of biomolecules are used to model an n-dimensional signal which represents the entire information-bearing biomolecule. Such signals are used to search for biological principles, analogies or similarities between biomolecules. In a series of simple experiments (bacterial DNA, generation of real signals using melting enthalpies, detection filtering by convolution of signals) we have shown that the novel system for comparative analysis of the properties of information-bearing biomolecules works as in theory.


BACKGROUND
http://genome.gbf.de/wavepaper.
Kauer
Gerhard
G
Department of Genome Analysis, GBF-German Research Centre for Biotechnology, Mascheroder Weg 1, D-38124 Braunschweig, Germany. GerhardKauer@t-online.de
Blöcker
Helmut
H
D000465:Algorithms; D020816:Amino Acid Motifs; D001704:Biopolymers / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D005240:Feasibility Studies; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006360:Heat-Shock Proteins / Q000737:chemistry; D008954:Models, Biological; D008956:Models, Chemical; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein / Q000379:methods*; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013329:Structure-Activity Relationship; D013598:Systems Theory
D001704:Biopolymers; D006360:Heat-Shock Proteins