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The statistical analysis of direct repeats in nucleic acid sequences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Rakesh Shukla*
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati
R. C. Srivastava*
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
*
Postal address: Institute of Environmental Health, Division of Biostatistics, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Wherry Hall (#183), Cincinnati, OH 45267, USA.
∗∗Postal address: Department of Statistics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.

Abstract

Sequence symmetries in DNA and RNA are being discovered at an increasing rate. Conjectures and hypotheses are being proposed for their possible structural and functional role in the nucleic acid. In this paper a probability model is studied which evaluates the probabilities of various repeats occurring by chance alone. Expressions are derived for the mean and variance of the statistics employed. The central limit theorem for dependent trials is used to obtain the asymptotic distributions. An indication is given of how to use the model to search for various gene amplification events in the evolutionary history of the sequences.

Type
Research Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 1985 

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References

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