Sharif Digital Repository

Background: Codon degeneracy and codon usage by organisms is an interesting and challenging problem. Researchers demonstrated the relation between codon usage and various functions or properties of genes and proteins, such as gene regulation, translation rate, translation efficiency, mRNA stability, splicing, and protein domains. Researchers usually represent segments of proteins responsible for specific functions or structures in a family of proteins as sequence patterns or motifs. We asked the question if organisms use the same codons in pattern segments as compared to the rest of the sequence. Methods. We used the likelihood ratio test, Pearson's chi-squared test, and mutual information... 

The promise of graphene for use as a vapor sensor motivated exploration of the vapor responses of graphene nanomesh (GNM) functionalized with single stranded DNA. Devices detected different vapor types, including carboxylic acids, aldehydes, organophosphates, and explosives. As-fabricated GNM field effect transistors (FETs) had larger vapor responses than standard graphene FETs due to the effect of oxidized edges and lattice defects. DNA-GNM devices discriminated between homologous species with detection limits of a few parts per million, with fast response and recovery. Responses varied significantly when the base sequence of the DNA was changed, making the sensor class an intriguing... 

The majority of eukaryotic DNA, about three quarter, is wrapped around histone proteins forming so-called nucleosomes. To study nucleosomal DNA we introduce a coarse-grained molecular dynamics model based on sequence-dependent harmonic rigid base pair step parameters of DNA and nucleosomal binding sites. Mixed parametrization based on all-atom molecular dynamics and crystallographic data of protein-DNA structures is used for the base pair step parameters. The binding site parameters are adjusted by experimental B-factor values of the nucleosome crystal structure. The model is then used to determine the energy cost for placing a twist defect into the nucleosomal DNA which allows us to use... 

With large amounts of experimental data, modern molecular biology needs appropriate methods to deal with biological sequences. In this work, we apply a statistical method (Pearson's chi-square test) to recognize the signals appear in the whole genome of the Escherichia coli. To show the effectiveness of the method, we compare the Pearson's chi-square test with linguistic complexity on the complete genome of E. coli. The results suggest that Pearson's chi-square test is an efficient method for distinguishing genes (coding regions) form pseudogenes (noncoding regions). On the other hand, the performance of the linguistic complexity is much lower than the chi-square test method. We also use the...