Species Independence of Mutual Information in
Coding and Noncoding DNA
Ivo Grosse1,
Hanspeter Herzel2,
Sergey V. Buldyrev1,
and H. Eugene Stanley1
1Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics,
Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215
2Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt University,
Invalidenstrasse, 43, 10115 Berlin, Germany
Physical Review E,
61(5):5624-5629 (May 2000)
Abstract
We explore if there exist universal statistical patterns that are
different in coding and noncoding DNA and can be found in all
living organisms, regardless of their phylogenetic origin.
We find that (i) the mutual information function has a
significantly different functional form in coding and noncoding
DNA. We further find that (ii) the probability distributions of
the average mutual information I are significantly different
in coding and noncoding DNA, while (iii) they are almost the
same for organisms of all taxonomic classes. Surprisingly,
we find that I is capable of predicting coding regions as
accurately as organism-specific coding measures.
