Intra-strand symmetries and asymmetries in bacterial DNA: Evolutive features or relics of primordial genomes?

TL;DR

This paper investigates the origins of intra-strand symmetry and asymmetry in bacterial DNA, comparing evolutionary explanations with the hypothesis that they are relics of primordial genomes, and discusses models and testing strategies.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of models explaining DNA asymmetries, focusing on the S-H model as a primordial relic hypothesis and proposing ways to test and formulate it as an evolutionary model.

Findings

Analysis supports the idea that some DNA features may be primordial relics.

The S-H model can be reformulated as an evolutionary model.

Proposes experimental directions to test primordial relic hypotheses.

Abstract

In this work we analyze some models used to explain the origins of intra-strand parity and strand compositional asymmetries in bacterial genomes. Due to the particular way that these two features emerge in bacterial DNA, we performed our analysis from the perspective that they are complementary phenomena that should be addressed together. Although most of the models for these features try to explain them as consequence of evolutionary mechanisms, recently it was proposed that they could be `relics' of some primordial genome that were conserved thorough out the genome evolution. We shall pay special attention to the S-H model, which is, up to the date, the unique model proposed as a possible explanation for intra-strand parity and strand compositional asymmetries in primordial genomes as mere consequence of randomness under chemical/physical constraints. In particular, we shall discuss possible directions to test some of the hypotheses of the S-H model, and we will present a possible formulation of the S-H model as an evolutive model too.