@misc{10481/107801,
year = {2025},
month = {9},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10481/107801},
abstract = {The concept of a genome signature broadly refers to characteristic patterns in DNA sequences that enable the identification and comparison of species or individuals, often
without requiring sequence alignment. Such signatures have applications ranging from
forensic identification of individuals to cancer genomics. In comparative genomics and
evolutionary biology, genome signatures typically rely on statistical properties of DNA that
are species-specific and carry phylogenetic information reflecting evolutionary relationships. We propose a novel genome signature based on the compositional structure of DNA,
defined by the distributions of strong/weak, purine/pyrimidine, and keto/amino ratios
across DNA segments identified through entropic segmentation. We observe that these ratio
distributions are similar among closely related species but differ markedly between distant
ones. To quantify these differences, we employ the Jensen–Shannon distance—a symmetric
and robust measure of distributional dissimilarity—to define a genome-to-genome distance
metric, termed Segment Compositional Distance (D). Our results demonstrate a clear
correlation between D and species divergence times, and also that this metric captures a
strong phylogenetic signal. Our method employs a genome-wide approach rather than
tracking specific mutations; thus, D offers a coarse-grained perspective on genome compositional evolution, contributing to the ongoing discussion surrounding the molecular
clock hypothesis.},
organization = {Junta de Andalucía (Grant no. FQM-362)},
publisher = {MDPI},
keywords = {entropic segmentation},
keywords = {Jensen-Shannon divergence},
keywords = {genome signatures},
title = {Genome Divergence Based on Entropic Segmentation of DNA},
doi = {10.3390/e27101019},
author = {Bernaola Galván, Pedro A. and Carpena, Pedro and Gómez Martín, Cristina and Oliver Jiménez, José Lutgardo},
}