Suggested Model for the Origin of Mosaic Structure of DNA

TL;DR

This paper proposes a model linking the mosaic structure of eukaryotic DNA to a phase transition phenomenon observed in a statistical model of a one-dimensional crystal with impurities, predicting power-law behaviors in DNA sequence features.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypothesis that DNA mosaic structure originated from impurity condensation phenomena, supported by a model mapping to DNA features and preliminary sequence analysis.

Findings

Prediction of power-law behavior in exon size distribution.

Preliminary analysis of intron sequences supports the model.

Suggests a phase transition mechanism in DNA evolution.

Abstract

In view of the critical behavior exhibited by a statistical model describing a one dimensional crystal containing isotopic impurities and the fact that for impurity mass parameter 3 times the host mass the critical temperature can attain very high values, we suggest that the mosaic structure displayed by certain nucleic acids (DNA) of eukaryotic organisms might have had its origins in a phenomenon of condensation of codons ocurred at prebiotic conditions. An appropriated map of that model onto some of the DNA features allows one to predict power law behavior for both correlation functions and exons size distribution in binary sequences of nucleotides which are distinguished by their protein coding or noncoding functions. Preliminary studies of these quantities performed on intron-containing sequences from GenBank are presented here.