Related papers: Exons, introns and DNA thermodynamics
Most living systems rely on double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) to store their genetic information and perpetuate themselves. This biological information has been considered the main target of evolution. However, here we show that symmetries and…
When DNA molecules are heated they denature. This occurs locally so that loops of molten single DNA strands form, connected by intact double-stranded DNA pieces. The properties of this "melting" transition have been intensively…
The evolution in coding DNA sequences brings new flexibility and freedom to the codon words, even as the underlying nucleotides get significantly ordered. These curious contra-rules of gene organisation are observed from the distribution of…
Despite tremendous advances in the field of genomics, the amount and function of the large non-coding part of the genome in higher organisms remains poorly understood. Here we report an observation, made for 37 fully sequenced eukaryotic…
A number of recently discovered protein structures incorporate a rather unexpected structural feature: a knot in the polypeptide backbone. These knots are extremely rare, but their occurrence is likely connected to protein function in as…
Essential genes constitute the core of genes which cannot be mutated too much nor lost along the evolutionary history of a species. Natural selection is expected to be stricter on essential genes and on conserved (highly shared) genes, than…
The codons, sixtyfour in number, are distributed over the coding parts of DNA sequences. The distribution function is the plot of frequency-versus-rank of the codons. These distributions are characterised by parameters that are almost…
Electronic properties of DNA are believed to play a crucial role in many phenomena in living organisms, for example the location of DNA lesions by base excision repair (BER) glycosylases and the regulation of tumor-suppressor genes such as…
The spatial organization of DNA involves DNA loop extrusion and the formation of protein-DNA condensates. While the significance of each process is increasingly recognized, their interplay remains unexplored. Using molecular dynamics…
Background: Exonic splice enhancers are sequences embedded within exons which promote and regulate the splicing of the transcript in which they are located. A class of exonic splice enhancers are the SR proteins, which are thought to…
Knots are fascinating topological structures that have been observed in various contexts, ranging from micro-worlds to macro-systems, and are conjectured to play a fundamental role in their respective fields. In order to characterize their…
We predict a novel temperature-driven phase transition of DNA below the melting transition. The additional, intermediate phase exists for repetitive sequences, when the two strands have different lengths. In this phase, the excess bases of…
We develop a simple model to study the effects of an applied force on the melting of a double stranded DNA (dsDNA). Using this model, we could study the stretching, unzipping, rupture and slippage like transition in a dsDNA. We show that in…
Protein sequences serve as a natural record of the evolutionary constraints that shape their functional structures. We show that it is possible to use only sequence information to go beyond predicting native structures and global stability…
The dynamics of loops at the DNA denaturation transition is studied. A scaling argument is used to evaluate the asymptotic behavior of the autocorrelation function of the state of complementary bases (either open or closed). The long-time…
In view of the critical behavior exhibited by a statistical model describing a one dimensional crystal containing isotopic impurities and the fact that for impurity mass parameter 3 times the host mass the critical temperature can attain…
Living cells provide a fluctuating, out-of-equilibrium environment in which genes must coordinate cellular function. DNA looping, which is a common means of regulating transcription, is very much a stochastic process; the loops arise from…
An approach for approximately calculating the number of genes in a genome is presented, which takes into account the average protein length expected for the species. A number of virus, bacterial and eukaryotic genomes are scrutinized.…
Complexity metrics and machine learning (ML) models have been utilized to analyze the lengths of segmental genomic entities like: exons, introns, intergenic and repeat/unique DNA sequences, in each of the 22 human chromosomes. The purpose…
We introduce a simple model for DNA evolution. Using the method of Peng et al.$^1$, we investigate the fractal properties of the system. For small chains and chains of intermediate size we find a fractal exponent that indicates the…