Julius H. Jackson & Patricia A. Herring Summary The goal of the proposed study is to identify the genomic origin of any prokaryotic gene based solely upon the nucleotide sequence. Protein-coding nucleotide sequences characteristically contain bases that tend to repeat at three-step intervals, or period-3 base repeats. Based upon prior work revealing that heterologous genes from an individual bacterial chromosome tended to construct the period-3 base repeats using a pattern common to genes from the same chromosome, we propose to determine whether patterns of period-3 repeats constitute genome labels for phylogenetically distinct bacteria. The hypothesis to be tested is: The pattern of bases comprising a period-3 repeat pattern in protein-coding genes is measurably similar to that of other genes from the same genome. A component signal analysis of the base composition of period-3 repeats will be used as inputs for an artificial neural net to assist in analyzing the relationships between the periodic information and the genes and genomes that are sources of the data. Possibly, such a signal marks the evolutionary and genetic history of a gene. Reading that history might tell where the gene has been and for approximately how long. In addition to characterizing system labels for chromosomes, this study could potentially provide information critical to understanding the early history of chromosome formation and the impact of gene flow on gene and genome assembly. A nearly immediate impact could be the detection of informational labels to track gene flow, and determine the hosts of origin of genes moving through cell populations in nature. This study may make it possible to identify the prokaryotic host of origin for any gene found anywhere.
