Nucleotide, dinucleotide and trinucleotide frequencies explain patterns observed in chaos game representations of DNA sequences.

The chaos game representation (CGR) is a scatter plot derived from a DNA sequence, with each point of the plot corresponding to one base of the sequence. If the DNA sequence were a random collection of bases, the CGR would be a uniformly filled square; conversely, any patterns visible in the CGR represent some pattern (information) in the DNA sequence. In this paper, patterns previously observed in a variety of DNA sequences are explained solely in terms of nucleotide, dinucleotide and trinucleotide frequencies.