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High-level organization of isochores into gigantic superstructures in the human genome

P. Carpena1,2,*, J. L. Oliver3, M. Hackenberg3, A. V. Coronado1,2, G. Barturen3, and P. Bernaola-Galván1

  • 1Departamento de Física Aplicada II, Universidad de Málaga, ES-29071, Málaga, Spain
  • 2Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
  • 3Departamento de Genética, Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad de Granada, ES-18071 Granada, Spain

  • *pcarpena@ctima.uma.es
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Phys. Rev. E 83, 031908 – Published 15 March, 2011

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.031908

Abstract

Human DNA shows a complex structure with compositional features at many scales; the isochores—long DNA segments (~105 bp) of relatively homogeneous guanine-cytosine (G + C) content—are the largest well-documented and well-analyzed compositional structures. However, we report here on the existence of a high-level compositional organization of isochores in the human genome. By using a segmentation algorithm incorporating the long-range correlations existing in human DNA, we find that every chromosome is composed of a few huge segments (~ 107 bp) of relatively homogeneous G + C content, which become the largest compositional organization of the genome. Finally, we show evidence of the biological relevance of these superstructures, pointing to a large-scale functional organization of the human genome.

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Article Text

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Phys. Rev. E 83, 031908– Published 15 March, 2011
  • Received 28 May 2010

©2011 American Physical Society

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