Our group has a new paper out in the latest issue of Computational Biology and Chemistry. The article entitled "Orphan and gene related CpG Islands follow power-law-like distributions in several genomes: Evidence of function-related and taxonomy-related modes of distribution" forms part of a special collective volume dedicated to the "Complexity of the Genome" and is the fruit of an ongoing collaboration with the group of Yannis Almirantis at the NCSR "Demokritos"
The work attempts to tackle a number of questions related to the localization of CpG islands in eukaryotic genomes, such as a. how are CpG islands distributed in the genome b. what differences are there in the distribution of gene-related and "orphan" (lying away from known genes CpG islands and c. which evolutionary scenario could explain the observed distributions.
We find that the distributions followed by both gene-related and "orphan" CpG islands are highly similar power-laws that may be formed through a relatively simple duplication/elimination evolutionary process. Our findings suggest that CpG islands located away from known genes behave exactly like "normal" CpG islands from the statistical point of view, a fact that may have implications in our interpretation of their function.
You can get a more detailed summary of the paper at the Publications page, while a full-text version is available upon request via e-mail.
The work attempts to tackle a number of questions related to the localization of CpG islands in eukaryotic genomes, such as a. how are CpG islands distributed in the genome b. what differences are there in the distribution of gene-related and "orphan" (lying away from known genes CpG islands and c. which evolutionary scenario could explain the observed distributions.
We find that the distributions followed by both gene-related and "orphan" CpG islands are highly similar power-laws that may be formed through a relatively simple duplication/elimination evolutionary process. Our findings suggest that CpG islands located away from known genes behave exactly like "normal" CpG islands from the statistical point of view, a fact that may have implications in our interpretation of their function.
You can get a more detailed summary of the paper at the Publications page, while a full-text version is available upon request via e-mail.
RSS Feed
