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Genomes: At the edge of chaos with maximum information capacity

Sing-Guan Kong

Department of Mechatronics and Biomedical Engineering, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, 43000 Kajang, Selangor, Malaysia

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Hong-Da Chen

Department of Physics, Chung Yuan Christian University, Zhongli, Taoyuan City 32023, R. O. C. Taiwan

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Andrew Torda

Center for Bioinformatics, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

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, and

H. C. Lee

Department of Physics, Chung Yuan Christian University, Zhongli, Taoyuan City 32023, R. O. C. Taiwan

Department of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering, National Central University, Zhongli, Taoyuan City 32001, R. O. C. Taiwan

E-mail Address: hclee12345@gmail.com

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S0217979215502550Cited by:0 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

We propose an order index, $ϕ$ , which quantifies the notion of “life at the edge of chaos” when applied to genome sequences. It maps genomes to a number from 0 (random and of infinite length) to 1 (fully ordered) and applies regardless of sequence length and base composition. The 786 complete genomic sequences in GenBank were found to have $ϕ$ values in a very narrow range, 0.037 ± 0.027. We show this implies that genomes are halfway towards being completely random, namely, at the edge of chaos. We argue that this narrow range represents the neighborhood of a fixed-point in the space of sequences, and genomes are driven there by the dynamics of a robust, predominantly neutral evolution process.

This article will also appear in “80th Birthday of Professor Hao Bailin”, edited by: Phua Kok Khoo and Ge Molin (World Scientific, 2016).

Keywords:

PACS: 87.14.Gg, 87.15.Cc, 02.50.–r, 05.45.–a, 89.70.+c, 87.23.Kg

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