Identifying statistical dependence in genomic sequences via mutual information estimates

Questions of understanding and quantifying the representation and amount of information in organisms have become a central part of biological research, as they potentially hold the key to fundamental advances. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of informationtheoretic tools for the task of identifying segments of biomolecules (DNA or RNA) that are statistically correlated. We develop a precise and reliable methodology, based on the notion of mutual information, for finding and extracting statistical as well as structural dependencies. A simple threshold function is defined, and its use in quantifying the level of significance of dependencies between biological segments is explored. These tools are used in two specific applications. First, for the identification of correlations between different parts of the maize zmSRp32 gene. There, we find significant dependencies between the 5’ untranslated region in zmSRp32 and its alternatively spliced exons. This observation may ind...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: CORR
• Authors: H. M. Aktulga, I. Kontoyiannis, L. A. Lyznik, Lukasz Szpankowski, A. Y. Grama, Wojciech Szpankowski
• Keywords: Alternative Splicing, Combined DNA Index System, CORR 2007, Education, Mutual Information