Fractals and Hidden Symmetries in DNA.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Mathematical Problems in Engineering Volume 2010, Article ID 507056, 31 pages doi:10.1155/2010/507056 Research Article Fractals and Hidden Symmetries in DNA Carlo Cattani Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Salerno, Via Ponte Don Melillo, 84084 Fisciano, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Carlo Cattani, ccattani@unisa.it Received 27 January 2010; Accepted 8 March 2010 Academic Editor: Cristian Toma Copyright q 2010 Carlo Cattani. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper deals with the digital complex representation of a DNA sequence and the analysis of existing correlations by wavelets. The symbolic DNA sequence is mapped into a nonlinear time series. By studying this time series the existence of fractal shapes and symmetries will be shown. At first step, the indicator matrix enables us to recognize some typical patterns of nucleotide distribution. The DNA sequence, of the influenza virus A H1N1, is investigated by using the complex representation, together with the corresponding walks on DNA; in particular, it is shown that DNA walks are fractals. Finally, by using the wavelet analysis, the existence of symmetries is proven. 1. Introduction The main task of this paper is to show the existence of hidden geometries which underly the structure of a DNA sequence. Moreover, it will be shown that this geometry is fractal. In order to achieve this goal the fundamental steps are 1 the choice of the digital representation of the symbolic sequence of DNA, 2 the definition of the indicator matrix, 3 the construction