Entropy of the genetic information and evolution

The entropy of the amino acid sequences coded by DNA is considered as a measure of diversity of variety of proteins, and is taken as a measure of evolution. The DNA or m-RNA sequence is considered as a stationary second-order Markov chain composed of four kinds of bases. Because of the biased nature...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Origins of Life 1975-01, Vol.6 (1-2), p.219-227
Main Authors: Hasegawa, M, Yano, T A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amino Acid Sequence
Base Sequence
Biological Evolution
DNA
Genetic Code
Markov Chains
Molecular Biology
Probability
Proteins
Space life sciences
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Summary:The entropy of the amino acid sequences coded by DNA is considered as a measure of diversity of variety of proteins, and is taken as a measure of evolution. The DNA or m-RNA sequence is considered as a stationary second-order Markov chain composed of four kinds of bases. Because of the biased nature of the genetic code table, increase of entropy of amino acid sequences is possible with biased nucleotide sequence. Thus the biased DNA base composition and the extreme rarity of the base doublet CpG of higher organisms are explained. It is expected that the amino acid composition was highly biased at the days of the origin of the genetic code table, and the more frequent amino acids have tended to get rarer, and the rarer ones more frequent. This tendency is observed in the evolution of hemoglobin, cytochrome C, fibrinopeptide, immunoglobulin and lysozyme, and protein as a whole.
ISSN:0302-1688
1573-0875
DOI:10.1007/BF01372408