Mosaic Organization of DNA Nucleotides
C-K. Peng, S.V. Buldyrev, S. Havlin, M. Simon, H.E. Stanley, and
A.L. Goldberger
Physical Review E 49(2), 1685--1689 (1994).
Abstract
Long-range power-law correlations have been reported recently for
DNA sequences containing noncoding regions. We address the question
of whether such correlations may be a trivial consequence of the
known mosaic structure ("patchiness") of DNA. We analyze two classes
of controls consisting of patchy nucleotide sequences generated
by different algorithms - one without and one with long-range
power-law correlations. Although both types of sequences are
highly heterogeneous, they are quantitatively distinguishable
by an alternative fluctuation analysis method that differentiates
local patchiness from long-range correlations. Application of this
analysis to selected DNA sequences demonstrates that patchiness
is not sufficient to account for long-range correlation properties.
