dorsal/arxiv
View SchemaScaling laws in the functional content of genomes
| Authors | Erik van Nimwegen |
|---|---|
| Categories | |
| ArXiv ID | physics/0307001 |
| URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0307001 |
Abstract
With the number of sequenced genomes now over one hundred, and the availability of rough functional annotations for a substantial proportion of their genes, it has become possible to study the statistics of gene content across genomes. Here I show that, for many high-level functional categories, the number of genes in the category scales as a power-law in the total number of genes in the genome. The occurrence of such scaling laws can be explained with a simple theoretical model, and this model suggests that the exponents of the observed scaling laws correspond to universal constants of the evolutionary process. I discuss some consequences of these scaling laws for our understanding of organism design.
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"abstract": "With the number of sequenced genomes now over one hundred, and the\navailability of rough functional annotations for a substantial proportion of\ntheir genes, it has become possible to study the statistics of gene content\nacross genomes. Here I show that, for many high-level functional categories,\nthe number of genes in the category scales as a power-law in the total number\nof genes in the genome. The occurrence of such scaling laws can be explained\nwith a simple theoretical model, and this model suggests that the exponents of\nthe observed scaling laws correspond to universal constants of the evolutionary\nprocess. I discuss some consequences of these scaling laws for our\nunderstanding of organism design.",
"arxiv_id": "physics/0307001",
"authors": [
"Erik van Nimwegen"
],
"categories": [
"physics.bio-ph",
"q-bio.GN"
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"title": "Scaling laws in the functional content of genomes",
"url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0307001"
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