Title: Are amino acids counts in yeast ORFs negative binomial?

Authors: Anna Bartkowiak, Adam Szustalewicz

Addresses: University of Wroclaw, Institute of Computer Science, Joliot Curie 15, 50-383 Wroclaw, Poland; Wroclaw High School of Applied Informatics, Wejherowska 28, 54-239 Wroclaw, Poland. ' University of Wroclaw, Institute of Computer Science, Joliot Curie 15, 50-383 Wroclaw, Poland

Abstract: The genetic code of living organisms is inscribed into so called Open Reading Frames (ORFs) positioned in chromosomes. The code uses 20 amino acids as building blocks for the inscribed information. We show that the number of appearances of a given amino acid in ORFs on a yeast chromosome may be described in a highly satisfactory manner by the Negative Binomial (NB) distribution. The fit is surprisingly good. We show the results for ORFs found in four yeast chromosomes, namely no. 4, 7, 11 and 13. The negative binomial fit is shown (1) graphically; (2) considering the Kolmogorov statistic; (3) performing a chi-square test and (4) using simulated samples. The applicability of the Kolmogorov test to the analysed data is discussed.

Keywords: negative binomial distribution; amino acids frequency; yeast genetic code; test of fit; open reading frames; ORFs; biometrics; yeast chromosomes.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBM.2009.024274

International Journal of Biometrics, 2009 Vol.1 No.3, pp.268 - 287

Published online: 30 Mar 2009 *

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