High-level organization of isochores into gigantic superstructures in the human genome Carpena, Pedro Oliver Jiménez, José Lutgardo Hackenberg, Michael Coronado, Ana V. Barturen Briñas, Guillermo Bernaola-Galván, Pedro We thank the Spanish Government (Grant BIO2008-01353 to J.L.O., P.C., and P.B., mobilities PR2009-0285 to P.C. and JC2009-00067 to A.V.C., and Juan de la Cierva Grant to M.H.), the Spanish Junta de Andalucía (Grants P07-FQM3163, P06-FQM1858), and the Basque Country (Programa de formación de investigadores grant to G.B.). Departamento de Física Aplicada II, Universidad de Málaga, ES-29071, Málaga, Spain Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Departamento de Genética, Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad de Granada, ES-18071 Granada, Spain Human DNA shows a complex structure with compositional features at many scales; the isochores—long DNA segments (~105 bp) of relatively homogeneous guanine-cytosine (G + C) content—are the largest well-documented and well-analyzed compositional structures. However, we report here on the existence of a high-level compositional organization of isochores in the human genome. By using a segmentation algorithm incorporating the long-range correlations existing in human DNA, we find that every chromosome is composed of a few huge segments (~ 107 bp) of relatively homogeneous G + C content, which become the largest compositional organization of the genome. Finally, we show evidence of the biological relevance of these superstructures, pointing to a large-scale functional organization of the human genome. 2026-02-20T12:31:36Z 2026-02-20T12:31:36Z 2011-03-15 journal article Carpena, P., Carpena, P., Oliver, J.L., Hackenberg, M., Coronado, A.V., Coronado, A.V., Barturen, G., & Bernaola-Galván, P.A. (2011). High-level organization of isochores into gigantic superstructures in the human genome. Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 83 3 Pt 1, 031908. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.83.031908 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/111321 10.1103/PhysRevE.83.031908 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ open access Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License Atribución 4.0 Internacional American Physical Society