Is a genome a codeword of an error-correcting code?

• Autor(a) principal: FARIA, L. C. B.
• Data de Publicação: 2012
• Outros Autores: ROCHA, A. S. L., KLEINSCHMIDT, J. H., SILVA-FILHO, M. C., BIM, E., HERAI, R. H., YAMAGISHI, M. E. B., PALAZZO JÚNIOR, R.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da EMBRAPA (Repository Open Access to Scientific Information from EMBRAPA - Alice)
• Texto Completo: http://www.alice.cnptia.embrapa.br/alice/handle/doc/925637
• topic: Sequência de DNA; Biology; Biologia; Genome; Nucleotide sequences

Since a genome is a discrete sequence, the elements of which belong to a set of four letters, the question as to whether or not there is an error-correcting code underlying DNA sequences is unavoidable. The most common approach to answering this question is to propose a methodology to verify the existence of such a code. However, none of the methodologies proposed so far, although quite clever, has achieved that goal. In a recent work, we showed that DNA sequences can be identified as codewords in a class of cyclic error-correcting codes known as Hamming codes. In this paper, we show that a complete intron-exon gene, and even a plasmid genome, can be identified as a Hamming code codeword as well. Although this does not constitute a definitive proof that there is an error-correcting code underlying DNA sequences, it is the first evidence in this direction.