Skip to content

Non-extensive Trends in the Size Distribution of Coding and Non-coding DNA Sequences in the Human Genome

Th. Oikonomou, A. Provata

q-bio.GNarXiv:q-bio/0510021

Abstract

We study the primary DNA structure of four of the most completely sequenced human chromosomes (including chromosome 19 which is the most dense in coding), using Non-extensive Statistics. We show that the exponents governing the decay of the coding size distributions vary between 5.2 r 5.7 for the short scales and 1.45 q 1.50 for the large scales. On the contrary, the exponents governing the decay of the non-coding size distributions in these four chromosomes, take the values 2.4 r 3.2 for the short scales and 1.50 q 1.72 for the large scales. This quantitative difference, in particular in the tail exponent q, indicates that the non-coding (coding) size distributions have long (short) range correlations. This non-trivial difference in the DNA statistics is attributed to the non-conservative (conservative) evolution dynamics acting on the non-coding (coding) DNA sequences.

Create a lesson