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Abstract:
MotivationUnique sequence regions are associated with genetic function in vertebrate genomes. However, measuring uniqueness, or absence of long repeats, along a genome is conceptually and computationally difficult. Here we use a previously published variant of the Lempel-Ziv complexity, the match complexity, Cm, and augment it by deriving its null distribution for random sequences. We then apply Cm to the human and mouse genomes to investigate the relationship between sequence complexity and function.ResultsWe implemented Cm in the program macle and show through simulation that the newly derived null distribution of Cm is accurate. This allows us to delineate high-complexity regions in the human and mouse genomes. Using our program macle2go, we find that these regions are two-fold enriched for genes. Moreover, the genes contained in these regions are more than 10-fold enriched for developmental functions.AvailabilitySource code for macle and macle2go is available from www.github.com/evolbioinf/macle and www.github.com/evolbioinf/macle2go, respectively; Cm browser tracks from guanine.evolbio.mgp.de/complexity.
