Scaling law: a global topological property of genetic sequences.
Here, we study the topological properties of genetic sequence by viewing the entire sequence as a whole. First, a systematic way of coding the gene-combinations in a genetic sequence is developed. Next, we apply the coding method to real genetic sequences, and find a scale-free power-law distribution for some particular kinds of gene-combinations. Furthermore, we also present a model to reproduce the observed scale-free feature, which is based on three generic mechanisms: 1) Growth mechanism - genetic sequences expands continuously by the addition of new codon; 2) Preferential replication mechanism - the newly added codon at every time step is a replication of one of existed condons, and the probability that a codon is replicated is proportional to its emerging times in existed sequence; and 3) Mutation mechanism - following (2) the newly added codon has a small probability to mutate. To our knowledge, no report has been published to study the genetic sequences in such way.
School of Physics and Optical Information Technology, Jiaying University, 514015 MeiZhou, People's Republic of China. slbu@ustc.edu
Shou-Liang
SL
Bu
D000465:Algorithms; D001483:Base Sequence; D002874:Chromosome Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics*; D008957:Models, Genetic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*
D004247:DNA