1995/11/15 by Terence Hwa, Michael Lässig, Michael Lassig · 3 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Fractal and DNA sequence analysis #Machine Learning in Bioinformatics #comp-gas #cond-mat #nlin.CG #q-bio.QM
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.76.2591
4 pages including 4 figures (308kb post-script file)
arxiv created 1995/11/15 · openalex publication_date 1996/04/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The detection of similarities between long DNA and protein sequences is studied using concepts of statistical physics. It is shown that mutual similarities can be detected by sequence alignment methods only if their amount exceeds a threshold value. The onset of detection is a critical phase transition viewed as a localization-delocalization transition. The fidelity of the alignment is the order parameter of that transition; it leads to criteria to select optimal alignment parameters.