2003/08/30 by Li-Ching Hsieh, Li‐Ching Hsieh, Hsieh, Li-Ching +8
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Biochemical and Structural Characterization #Biological Physics (physics.bio-ph) #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Fractal and DNA sequence analysis #Genomics (q-bio.GN) #RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms #physics.bio-ph #q-bio.GN
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/0309006
4 pages 3 figures
arxiv created 2003/08/30 · openalex publication_date 2003/08/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Statistical analysis of distributions of occurrence frequencies of short words in 108 microbial complete genomes reveals the existence of a set of universal "root-sequence lengths" shared by all microbial genomes. These lengths and their universality give powerful clues to the way microbial genomes are grown. We show that the observed genomic properties are explained by a model for genome growth in which primitive genomes grew mainly by maximally stochastic duplications of short segments from an initial length of about 200 nucleotides (nt) to a length of about one million nt typical of microbial genomes. The relevance of the result of this study to the nature of simultaneous random growth and information acquisition by genomes, to the so-called RNA world in which life evolved before the rise of proteins and enzymes and to several other topics are discussed.