Phys Rev E Stat Phys Plasmas Fluids Relat Interdiscip Topics. 1994
Feb;49(2):1685-9.  

Mosaic organization of DNA nucleotides.

Peng CK, Buldyrev SV, Havlin S, Simons M, Stanley HE, Goldberger AL.

Department of Physics, Boston University, Massachusetts 02215, USA.

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
heterogenous, 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.

PMID: 9961383 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]