Informational laws of genome structures
Open accessAbstract
In recent years, the analysis of genomes by means of strings of length k occurring in the genomes, called k-mers, has provided important insights into the basic mechanisms and design principles of genome structures. In the present study, we focus on the proper choice of the value of k for applying information theoretic concepts that express intrinsic aspects of genomes. The value k = lg 2(n), where n is the genome length, is determined to be the best choice in the definition of some genomic informational indexes that are studied and computed for seventy genomes. These indexes, which are based on information entropies and on suitable comparisons with random genomes, suggest five informational laws, to which all of the considered genomes obey. Moreover, an informational genome complexity measure is proposed, which is a generalized logistic map that balances entropic and anti-entropic components of genomes and is related to their evolutionary dynamics. Finally, applications to computational synthetic biology are briefly outlined.
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Bonnici, V., & Manca, V.
- Affiliations
- University of Verona (IT)
- Corresponding author
- Manca, Vincenzo
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2016-06-29
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 28840-28840
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4937431
- OpenAlex
- W2464014972
- Cited by
- 38
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 2 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 1.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2023-02-28)
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Fractal and DNA sequence analysis
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Algorithms and Data Compression
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Keywords
- genome structure, k-mers, Shannon entropy, genome evolution, synthetic biology
- MeSH terms
- Algorithms, Animals, Humans, Models, Genetic, Genome, Evolution, Molecular, Entropy, Computational Biology
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