The Average Mutual Information Profile as a Genomic Signature

Background: Occult organizational structures in DNA sequences may hold the key to understanding functional and evolutionary aspects of the DNA molecule. Such structures can also provide the means for identifying and discriminating organisms using genomic data. Species specific genomic signatures are useful in a variety of contexts such as evolutionary analysis, assembly and classification of genomic sequences from large uncultivated microbial communities and a rapid identification system in health hazard situations. Results: We have analyzed genomic sequences of eukaryotic and prokaryotic chromosomes as well as various subtypes of viruses using an information theoretic framework. We confirm the existence of a species specific average mutual information (AMI) profile. We use these profiles to define a very simple, computationally efficient, alignment free, distance measure that reflects the evolutionary relationships between genomic sequences. We use this distance measure to classify c...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Mark Bauer, Sheldon M. Schuster, Khalid Sayood
• Keywords: BMCBI 2008, Dna Sequences, Genomic Sequences, Signature