Human repetitive sequence densities are mostly negatively correlated with R/Y-based nucleosome-positioning motifs and positively correlated with W/S-based motifs

Distinct DNA Sequence Preference for Histone Occupancy in Primary and Transformed Cells

Genome-wide occupancy of several histone modifications in various cell types has been studied using chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) sequencing. Histone occupancy depends on DNA sequence features like inter-strand symmetry of base composition and periodic occurrence of TT/AT. However, whether DNA sequence motifs act as an additional effector of histone occupancy is not known. We have analyzed the presence of DNA sequence motifs in publicly available ChIP-sequence datasets for different histone modifications. Our results show that DNA sequence motifs are associated with histone occupancy, some of which are different between primary and transformed cells. The motifs for primary and transformed cells showed different levels of GC-richness and proximity to transcription start sites (TSSs). The TSSs associated with transformed or primary cell-specific motifs showed different levels of TSS flank transcription in primary and transformed cells. Interestingly, TSSs with a motif-linked occupancy of H2AFZ, a component of positioned nucleosomes, showed a distinct pattern of RNA Polymerase II (POLR2A) occupancy and TSS flank transcription in primary and transformed cells. These results indicate that DNA sequence features dictate differential histone occupancy in primary and transformed cells, and the DNA sequence motifs affect transcription through regulation of histone occupancy.

Quantifying local randomness in human DNA and RNA sequences using Erdös motifs

In 1932, Paul Erdös asked whether a random walk constructed from a binary sequence can achieve the lowest possible deviation (lowest discrepancy), for the sequence itself and for all its subsequences formed by homogeneous arithmetic progressions. Although avoiding low discrepancy is impossible for infinite sequences, as recently proven by Terence Tao, attempts were made to construct such sequences with finite lengths. We recognize that such constructed sequences (we call these "Erdös sequences") exhibit certain hallmarks of randomness at the local level: they show roughly equal frequencies of short subsequences, and at the same time exclude trivial periodic patterns. For the human DNA we examine the frequency of a set of Erdös motifs of length-10 using three nucleotides-to-binary mappings. The particular length-10 Erdös sequence is derived from the length-11 Mathias sequence and is identical with the first 10 digits of the Thue-Morse sequence, underscoring the fact that both are deficient in periodicities. Our calculations indicate that: (1) the purine(A and G)/pyridimine(C and T) based Erdös motifs are greatly underrepresented in the human genome, (2) the strong(G and C)/weak(A and T) based Erdös motifs are slightly overrepresented, (3) the densities of the two are negatively correlated, (4) the Erdös motifs based on all three mappings being combined are slightly underrepresented, and (5) the strong/weak based Erdös motifs are greatly overrepresented in the human messenger RNA sequences.

Diminishing return for increased Mappability with longer sequencing reads: implications of the k-mer distributions in the human genome

Background

The amount of non-unique sequence (non-singletons) in a genome directly affects the difficulty of read alignment to a reference assembly for high throughput-sequencing data. Although a longer read is more likely to be uniquely mapped to the reference genome, a quantitative analysis of the influence of read lengths on mappability has been lacking. To address this question, we evaluate the k-mer distribution of the human reference genome. The k-mer frequency is determined for k ranging from 20 bp to 1000 bp.

Results

We observe that the proportion of non-singletons k-mers decreases slowly with increasing k, and can be fitted by piecewise power-law functions with different exponents at different ranges of k. A slower decay at greater values for k indicates more limited gains in mappability for read lengths between 200 bp and 1000 bp. The frequency distributions of k-mers exhibit long tails with a power-law-like trend, and rank frequency plots exhibit a concave Zipf’s curve. The most frequent 1000-mers comprise 172 regions, which include four large stretches on chromosomes 1 and X, containing genes of biomedical relevance. Comparison with other databases indicates that the 172 regions can be broadly classified into two types: those containing LINE transposable elements and those containing segmental duplications.

Conclusion

Read mappability as measured by the proportion of singletons increases steadily up to the length scale around 200 bp. When read length increases above 200 bp, smaller gains in mappability are expected. Moreover, the proportion of non-singletons decreases with read lengths much slower than linear. Even a read length of 1000 bp would not allow the unique alignment of reads for many coding regions of human genes. A mix of techniques will be needed for efficiently producing high-quality data that cover the complete human genome.

Periodic distribution of a putative nucleosome positioning motif in human, nonhuman primates, and archaea: mutual information analysis

Recently, Trifonov's group proposed a 10-mer DNA motif YYYYYRRRRR as a solution of the long-standing problem of sequence-based nucleosome positioning. To test whether this generic decamer represents a biological meaningful signal, we compare the distribution of this motif in primates and Archaea, which are known to contain nucleosomes, and in Eubacteria, which do not possess nucleosomes. The distribution of the motif is analyzed by the mutual information function (MIF) with a shifted version of itself (MIF profile). We found common features in the patterns of this generic decamer on MIF profiles among primate species, and interestingly we found conspicuous but dissimilar MIF profiles for each Archaea tested. The overall MIF profiles for each chromosome in each primate species also follow a similar pattern. Trifonov's generic decamer may be a highly conserved motif for the nucleosome positioning, but we argue that this is not the only motif. The distribution of this generic decamer exhibits previously unidentified periodicities, which are associated to highly repetitive sequences in the genome. Alu repetitive elements contribute to the most fundamental structure of nucleosome positioning in higher Eukaryotes. In some regions of primate chromosomes, the distribution of the decamer shows symmetrical patterns including inverted repeats.