Analyzing Genomes with Cumulative Skew Diagrams
Andrei Grigoriev
Nucleic Acids Research,
26(10):2286-2290 (May 15, 1998)
Abstract
A novel method of cumulative diagrams shows that the
nucleotide composition of a microbial chromosome changes at
two points separated by about a half of its length. These
points coincide with sites of replication origin and terminus
for all bacteria where such sites are known. The leading
strand is found to contain more guanine than cytosine
residues. This fact is used to predict origin and terminus
locations in other bacterial and archaeal genomes. Local
changes, visible as diagram distortions, may represent recent
genome rearrangements, as demonstrated for two strains of
Escherichia coli. Analysis of the diagrams of viral and
mitochondrial genomes suggests a link between the base
composition bias and the time spent by DNA in a single
stranded state during replication.
