Why is the Number of DNA Bases 4?

Authors

Bo Deng, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2006

Citation

Published in Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 68:3 (2006), pp. 727-733; doi: 10.1007/s11538-005-9019-y

Comments

Copyright © 2006 Society for Mathematical Biology. Published by Springer Verlag. Used by permission.

Abstract

In this paper we construct a mathematical model for DNA replication based on Shannon’s mathematical theory for communication. We treatDNAreplication as a communication channel. We show that the mean replication rate is maximal with four nucleotide bases under the primary assumption that the pairing time of the G–C bases is between 1.65 and 3 times the pairing time of the A–T bases.