Analysis of bilateral inverse symmetry in whole bacterial chromosomes

The positions of the 64 DNA tri-nucleotides (triplets) along the Borrelia burgdorferi chromosome were determined and cumulative position plots (CPP) were obtained. Analysis of CPP for complementary triplets revealed close correlations in complementary triplet frequencies (CTF) between opposing leading and lagging strands. Such bilateral inverse symmetry (BIS) applied also to complementary mono- and di-nucleotides and to some >3 n-tuples. At the level of individual bases BIS explains Chargaff's second parity rule for whole bacterial chromosomes. Using shuffled control sequences we show that single-base BIS was not the source of higher-order BIS. Analysis of CTF in 45 other chromosomes suggests that BIS is a general property of eubacteria. BIS at the various levels may be due to the very similar numbers of codons used in chromosomal halves. Evolutionarily, BIS could have resulted from asymmetric substitution of bases combined with genetic rearrangements. However, the provocative theoretical alternative of whole-genome inverse duplication is here considered.     

EMBOSS软件包序列分析程序应用实例

本文介绍欧洲分子生物学开放软件包EMBOSS序列分析程序应用实例。第1节简单介绍EMBOSS软件包的概况和基本用法。第2节介绍格式转换、序列提取、序列变换和序列显示等常用序列处理程序。第3节介绍序列比对程序,包括双序列比对、多序列比对和点阵图程序。第4节介绍常用核酸序列分析程序,可用于核苷酸组分统计、开放读码框分析、CpG岛识别、密码子使用统计和重复序列寻找等。第5节介绍常用蛋白质序列分析程序,包括氨基酸组分统计、序列特征位点识别、二级结构分析等。文中结合教学实例,选择部分常用程序,给出具体运行方式,并扼要说明分析结果的生物学意义。文末对程序运行过程中需要注意的地方加以讨论,并用表格列出部分常用程序的名称和用途,以便读者查阅。