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. 2013 May 9;8(5):e61519. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061519

Google Matrix Analysis of DNA Sequences

Vivek Kandiah 1, Dima L Shepelyansky 1,*
Editor: Ali Torkamani2
PMCID: PMC3650020  PMID: 23671568

Abstract

For DNA sequences of various species we construct the Google matrix Inline graphic of Markov transitions between nearby words composed of several letters. The statistical distribution of matrix elements of this matrix is shown to be described by a power law with the exponent being close to those of outgoing links in such scale-free networks as the World Wide Web (WWW). At the same time the sum of ingoing matrix elements is characterized by the exponent being significantly larger than those typical for WWW networks. This results in a slow algebraic decay of the PageRank probability determined by the distribution of ingoing elements. The spectrum of Inline graphic is characterized by a large gap leading to a rapid relaxation process on the DNA sequence networks. We introduce the PageRank proximity correlator between different species which determines their statistical similarity from the view point of Markov chains. The properties of other eigenstates of the Google matrix are also discussed. Our results establish scale-free features of DNA sequence networks showing their similarities and distinctions with the WWW and linguistic networks.

Introduction

The theory of Markov chains [1] finds impressive modern applications to information retrieval and ranking of directed networks including the World Wide Web (WWW) where the number of nodes is now counted by tens of billions. The PageRank algorithm (PRA) [2] uses the concept of the Google matrix Inline graphic and allows to rank all WWW nodes in an efficient way. This algorithm is a fundamental element of the Google search engine used by a majority of Internet users. A detailed description of this method and basic properties of the Google matrix can be found e.g. in [3], [4].

The Google matrix belongs to the class of Perron-Frobenius operators naturally appearing in dynamical systems (see e.g. [5]). Using the Ulam method [6] a discrete approximant of Perron-Frobenius operator can be constructed for simple dynamical maps following only one trajectory in a chaotic component [7] or using many independent trajectories counting their probability transitions between phase space cells [8], [9], [10]. The studies of Google matrix of such directed Ulam networks provides an interesting and detailed analysis of dynamical properties of maps with a complex chaotic dynamics [7], [8], [9], [10].

In this work we use the Google matrix approach to study the statistical properties of DNA sequences of the species: Homo sapiens (HS, human), Canis familiaris (CF, dog), Loxodonta africana (LA, elephant), Bos Taurus (bull, BT), Danio rerio (DR, zebrafish), taken from the publicly available database [11]. The analysis of Poincaré recurrences in these DNA sequences [12] shows their similarities with the statistical properties of recurrences for dynamical trajectories in the Chirikov standard map and other symplectic maps [7]. Indeed, a DNA sequence can be viewed as a long symbolic trajectory and hence, the Google matrix, constructed from it, highlights the statistical features of DNA from a new viewpoint.

An important step in the statistical analysis of DNA sequences was done in [13] applying methods of statistical linguistics and determining the frequency of various words composed of up to 7 letters. A first order Markovian models have been also proposed and briefly discussed in this work. Here we show that the Google matrix analysis provides a natural extension of this approach. Thus the PageRank eigenvector gives the frequency appearance of words of given length. The spectrum and eigenstates of Inline graphic characterize the relaxation processes of different modes in the Markov process generated by a symbolic DNA sequence. We show that the comparison of word ranks of different species allows to identify proximity between species.

At present the investigations of statistical properties of DNA sequences are actively developed by various bioinformatic groups (see e.g. [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]). The development of various methods of statistical analysis of DNA sequences become now of great importance due to a rapid growth of collected genomic data. We hope that the Google matrix approach, which already demonstrated its efficiency for enormously large networks [2], [3], will find useful applications for analysis of genomic data sets.

Results

Construction of Google matrix from DNA sequence

From [11] we collected DNA sequences of HS represented as a single string of length Inline graphic base pairs (bp) corresponding to 5 individuals. Similar data are obtained for BT (Inline graphic bp), CF (Inline graphic bp), LA (Inline graphic bp), DR (Inline graphic bp). For HS, CF, LA, DR the statistical properties of Poincaré recurrences in these sequences are analyzed in [12]. All strings are composed of 4 letters Inline graphic and undetermined letter Inline graphic. The strings can be found at the web page [19].

For a given sequence we fix the words Inline graphic of Inline graphic letters length corresponding to the number of states Inline graphic. We consider that there is a transition from a state Inline graphic to state Inline graphic inside this basis Inline graphic when we move along the string from left to right going from a word Inline graphic to a next word Inline graphic. This transition adds one unit in the transition matrix element Inline graphic. The words with letter Inline graphic are omitted, the transitions are counted only between nearby words not separated by words with Inline graphic. There are approximately Inline graphic such transitions for the whole length Inline graphic since the fraction of undetermined letters Inline graphic is small. Thus we have Inline graphic. The Markov matrix of transitions Inline graphic is obtained by normalizing matrix elements in such a way that their sum in each column is equal to unity: Inline graphic. If there are columns with all zero elements (dangling nodes) then zeros of such columns are replaced by Inline graphic. Such a procedure corresponds to one used for the construction of Google matrix of the WWW [2], [3]. Then the Google matrix of DNA sequence is written as

graphic file with name pone.0061519.e030.jpg (1)

where Inline graphic is the damping factor for which the Google search uses usually the value Inline graphic [3]. The matrix Inline graphic belongs to the class of Perron-Frobenius operators. It has the largest eigenvalue Inline graphic with all other eigenvalues Inline graphic. For WWW usually there are isolated subspaces so that at Inline graphic there are many degenerate Inline graphic eigenvalues [4] so that the damping factor allows to eliminate this degeneracy creating a gap between Inline graphic and all other eigenvalues. For our DNA Google matrices we find that there is already a significant spectral gap naturally present. In this case the PageRank vector is not sensitive to the damping factor being in the range Inline graphic (other eigenvectors are independent of Inline graphic [3], [4], [9]). Due to that in the following we present all results at the value Inline graphic.

The spectrum Inline graphic and right eigenstates Inline graphic are determined by the equation

graphic file with name pone.0061519.e044.jpg (2)

The PageRank eigenvector Inline graphic at Inline graphic has positive or zero elements which can be interpreted as a probability to find a random surfer on a given site Inline graphic with the total probability normalized to unity Inline graphic. Thus, all sites can be ordered in a decreasing order of probability Inline graphic that gives us the PageRank order index Inline graphic with most frequent sites at low values of Inline graphic.

It is useful to consider the density of matrix elements Inline graphic in the PagePank indexes Inline graphic similar to the presentation used in [20], [21] for networks of Wikipedia, UK universities, Linux Kernel and Twitter. The image of the DNA Google matrix of HS is shown in Fig. 1 for words of 5 and 6 letters. We see that almost all matrix is full that is drastically different from the WWW and other networks considered in [20] where the matrix Inline graphic is very sparse. Thus the DNA Google matrix is more similar to the case of Twitter which is characterized by a strong connectivity of top PageRank nodes [21].

Figure 1. DNA Google matrix of Homo sapiens (HS) constructed for words of 5-letters (top) and 6-letters (bottom) length.

Figure 1

Matrix elements Inline graphic are shown in the basis of PageRank index Inline graphic (and Inline graphic). Here, Inline graphic and Inline graphic axes show Inline graphic and Inline graphic within the range Inline graphic (left) and Inline graphic (right). The element Inline graphic at Inline graphic is placed at top left corner. Color marks the amplitude of matrix elements changing from blue for minimum zero value to red at maximum value.

It is interesting to analyze the statistical properties of matrix elements Inline graphic. Their integrated distribution is shown in Fig. 2. Here Inline graphic is the number of matrix elements of the matrix Inline graphic with values Inline graphic. The data show that the number of nonzero matrix elements Inline graphic is very close to Inline graphic. The main fraction of elements has values Inline graphic (some elements Inline graphic since for certain Inline graphic there are many transitions to some node Inline graphic with Inline graphic and e.g. only one transition to other Inline graphic with Inline graphic). At the same time there are also transition elements Inline graphic with large values whose fraction decays in an algebraic law Inline graphic with some constant Inline graphic and an exponent Inline graphic. The fit of numerical data in the range Inline graphic of algebraic decay gives for Inline graphic: Inline graphic (BT), Inline graphic (CF), Inline graphic (LA), Inline graphic (HS), Inline graphic (DR). For HS case we find Inline graphic at Inline graphic and Inline graphic at Inline graphic with the average Inline graphic for Inline graphic. There are visible oscillations in the algebraic decay of Inline graphic with Inline graphic but in global we see that on average all species are well described by a universal decay law with the exponent Inline graphic. For comparison we also show the distribution Inline graphic for the WWW networks of University of Cambridge and Oxford in year 2006 (data from [4], [20]). In these networks we have Inline graphic and on average 10 links per node. We see that in these cases the distribution Inline graphic has a very short range in which the decay is at least approximately algebraic (Inline graphic). In contrast to that for the DNA sequences we have a large range of algebraic decay.

Figure 2. Integrated fraction Inline graphic of Google matrix elements with Inline graphic as a function of Inline graphic.

Figure 2

Left panel : Various species with 6-letters word length: bull BT (magenta), dog CF (red), elephant LA (green), Homo sapiens HS (blue) and zebrafish DR(black). Right panel : Data for HS sequence with words of length Inline graphic (brown), Inline graphic (blue), Inline graphic (red). For comparison black dashed and dotted curves show the same distribution for the WWW networks of Universities of Cambridge and Oxford in 2006 respectively.

Since in each column we have the sum of all elements equal to unity we can say that the differential fraction Inline graphic gives the distribution of outgoing matrix elements which is similar to the distribution of outgoing links extensively studied for the WWW networks [3], [23], [24], [25]. Indeed, for the WWW networks all links in a column are considered to have the same weight so that these matrix elements are given by an inverse number of outgoing links [3]. Usually the distribution of outgoing links follows a power law decay with an exponent Inline graphic even if it is known that this exponent is much more fluctuating compared to the case of ingoing links. Thus we establish that the distribution of DNA matrix elements is similar to the distribution of outgoing links in the WWW networks with Inline graphic. We note that for the distribution of outgoing links of Cambridge and Oxford networks the fit of numerical data gives the exponents Inline graphic (Cambridge) and Inline graphic (Oxford).

It is known that on average the probability of PageRank vector is proportional to the number of ingoing links [3]. This relation is established for scale-free networks with an algebraic distribution of links when the average number of links per node is about Inline graphic to Inline graphic that is usually the case for WWW, Twitter and Wikipedia networks [4], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25]. Thus in such a case the matrix Inline graphic is very sparse. For DNA we find an opposite situation where the Google matrix is almost full and zero matrix elements are practically absent. In such a case an analogue of number of ingoing links is the sum of ingoing matrix elements Inline graphic. The integrated distribution of ingoing matrix elements with the dependence of Inline graphic on Inline graphic is shown in Fig. 3. Here Inline graphic is defined as the number of nodes with the sum of ingoing matrix elements being larger than Inline graphic. A significant part of this dependence, corresponding to large values of Inline graphic and determining the PageRank probability decay, is well described by a power law Inline graphic. The fit of data at Inline graphic gives Inline graphic (BT), Inline graphic (CF), Inline graphic (LA), Inline graphic (HS), Inline graphic (DR). For HS case at Inline graphic we find respectively Inline graphic and Inline graphic. For Inline graphic and other species we have an average Inline graphic.

Figure 3. Integrated fraction Inline graphic of sum of ingoing matrix elements with Inline graphic.

Figure 3

Left and right panels show the same cases as in Fig. 2 in same colors. The dashed and dotted curves are shifted in Inline graphic-axis by one unit left to fit the figure scale.

Usually for ingoing links distribution of WWW and other networks one finds the exponent Inline graphic [23], [24], [25]. This value of Inline graphic is expected to be the same as the exponent for ingoing matrix elements of matrix Inline graphic. Indeed, for the ingoing matrix elements of Cambridge and Oxford networks we find respectively the exponents Inline graphic and Inline graphic (see curves in Fig. 3). For ingoing links distribution of Cambridge and Oxford networks we obtain respectively Inline graphic and Inline graphic which are close to the usual WWW value Inline graphic. Thus we can say that for the WWW type networks we have Inline graphic. In contrast the exponent Inline graphic for DNA Google matrix elements gets significantly larger value Inline graphic. This feature marks a significant difference between DNA and WWW networks.

For DNA we see that there is a certain curvature in addition to a linear decay in log-log scale. From one side, all species are close to a unique universal decay curve which describes the distribution of ingoing matrix elements Inline graphic (there is a more pronounced deviation for DR which does not belong to mammalian species). However, from other side we see visible differences between distributions of various species (e.g. non mammalian DR case has the largest deviation from others mammalian species). We will discuss the links between Inline graphic and the exponent Inline graphic of PageRank algebraic decay Inline graphic in next sections.

Spectrum of DNA Google matrix

The spectrum of eigenstates of DNA Google matrix Inline graphic of Inline graphic is shown in Fig. 4 for words of Inline graphic letters and matrix sizes Inline graphic. The spectra for DNA sequences of bull BT, dog CF, elephant LA and zebrafish DR are shown in Fig. 5 for words of Inline graphic letters. The spectra and eigenstates are obtained by direct numerical diagonalization of matrix Inline graphic using LAPACK standard code.

Figure 4. Spectrum of eigenvalues in the complex plane Inline graphic for DNA Google matrix of Homo sapiens (HS) shown for words of Inline graphic letters (from top to bottom).

Figure 4

Figure 5. Spectrum of eigenvalues in the complex plane Inline graphic for DNA Google matrix of of bull BT, dog CF, elephant LA, zebrafish DR shown for words of Inline graphic letters (from top to bottom).

Figure 5

In all cases the spectrum has a large gap which separates eigenvalue Inline graphic and all other eigenvalues with Inline graphic (only for non mammalian DR case we have a small group of eigenvalues within Inline graphic). This is drastically different from the spectrum of WWW and other type networks which usually have no gap in the vicinity of Inline graphic (see e.g. [4], [21], [22]). In a certain sense the DNA Inline graphic spectrum is similar to the spectrum of randomized WWW networks and the spectrum of Inline graphic of the Albert-Baraási network model discussed in [26], but the properties of the PageRank vector are rather different as we will see below.

Visually the spectrum is mostly similar between HS and CF having approximately the same radius of circular cloud Inline graphic. For DR this radius is the smallest with Inline graphic. Thus the spectrum of Inline graphic indicates the difference between mammalian and non mammalian sequences. For HS the increase of the word length Inline graphic leads to an increase of Inline graphic. For Inline graphic the number of nonzero matrix elements Inline graphic is close to Inline graphic and thus on average we have only about Inline graphic transitions per each element. This determines an approximate limit of reliable statistical computation of matrix elements Inline graphic for available HS sequence length Inline graphic. For HS at Inline graphic we verified that two halves of the whole sequence Inline graphic still give practically the same spectrum with a relative accuracy of Inline graphic for eigenvalues in the main part of the cloud at Inline graphic. This means that the spectrum presented in Figs 4,5 is statistically stable at the values of Inline graphic used in this work.

We also constructed the Google matrix Inline graphic by inverting the direction of transitions Inline graphic and then normalizing sum of all elements in each column to unity. This procedure is also equivalent to moving along the sequence, from word to word, not from left to right but from right to left. We note that for WWW and other networks such a matrix with inverted direction of links was used to obtain the CheiRank vector (which is the PageRank vector of matrix Inline graphic). Due to the inversion of links the CheiRank vector highlights very communicative nodes [4], [20], [21], [22]. In our case the spectrum of Inline graphic and Inline graphic are identical. As a result the probability distributions of PageRank and CheiRank vectors are the same. This is due to some kind of detailed balance principle: we count only transitions between nearby words in a DNA sequence and the direction of displacement along the sequence does not affect the average transition probabilities so that Inline graphic (up to statistical fluctuations). In a certain sense this situation is similar to the case of Ulam networks in symplectic maps where the conservation of phase space area leads to the same properties of Inline graphic and Inline graphic [7], [10].

We tried to test if a random matrix model can reproduce the distribution of eigenvalues in Inline graphic plane. With this aim we generated random matrix elements Inline graphic with exactly the same distribution Inline graphic as for HS case at Inline graphic (see Fig. 2). However, in this random model we found all eigenvalues homogeneously distributed in the radius Inline graphic being significantly smaller compared to the real data. Also in this case the PageRank probability Inline graphic changes only by 30% in the whole range Inline graphic being absolutely different from the real data (see next section). Thus the construction of random matrix models which are able to produce results similar to the real data remains as a task for future investigations.

PageRank properties of various species

By numerical diagonalization of the Google matrix we determine the PageRank vector Inline graphic at Inline graphic and several other eigenvectors with maximal values of Inline graphic. The dependence of probability Inline graphic on index Inline graphic is shown in Fig. 6 for various species and different word length Inline graphic. The probability Inline graphic describes the steady state of random walks on the Markov chain and thus it gives the frequency of appearance of various words of length Inline graphic in the whole sequence Inline graphic. The frequencies or probabilities of words appearance in the sequences have been obtained in [13] by a direct counting of words along the sequence (the available sequences Inline graphic were shorted at that times). Both methods are mathematically equivalent and indeed our distributions Inline graphic are in a good agreements with those found in [13] even if now we have a significantly better statistics.

Figure 6. Dependence of PageRank probability Inline graphic on PageRank index Inline graphic.

Figure 6

Left panel : Data for different species for word length of 6-letters: bull BT (magenta), dog CF (red), elephant LA (green), Homo sapiens HS (blue) and zebrafish DR (black). Right panel : Data for HS (full curve) and LA (dashed curve) for word length Inline graphic (brown), Inline graphic (blue/green), Inline graphic (red).

The decay of Inline graphic with Inline graphic can be approximately described by a power law Inline graphic. Thus for example for HS sequence at Inline graphic we find Inline graphic for the fit range Inline graphic that is rather close to the exponent found in [13]. Since on average the PageRank probability is proportional to the number of ingoing links, or the sum of ingoing matrix elements of Inline graphic, one has the relation between the exponent of PageRank Inline graphic and exponent of ingoing links (or matrix elements): Inline graphic [3], [4], [23], [24], [25]. Indeed, for the HS DNA case at Inline graphic we have Inline graphic that gives Inline graphic being close to the above value of Inline graphic obtained from the direct fit of Inline graphic dependence. We think that the agreement is not so perfect since there is a visible curvature in the log-log plot of Inline graphic vs Inline graphic in Fig. 3. Also due to a small value of Inline graphic the variation range of Inline graphic is not so large that reduces the accuracy of the numerical fit even if a formal statistical error is relatively small compared to a visible systematic nonlinear variations. In spite of this only approximate agreement we should say that in global the relation between Inline graphic and Inline graphic works correctly. In average we find for DNA network the value of Inline graphic being significantly larger than for the WWW networks with Inline graphic [3]. This gives a significantly smaller value Inline graphic for DNA case comparing to the usual WWW value Inline graphic (we note that the randomized WWW networks and the Albert-Barabási model have Inline graphic [26]). The relation between Inline graphic and Inline graphic also works for the DR DNA case at Inline graphic with Inline graphic that gives Inline graphic being in a satisfactory agreement with the fit value Inline graphic found from Inline graphic dependence of Fig. 6.

At Inline graphic we find for our species the following values of exponent Inline graphic (BT), Inline graphic (CF), Inline graphic (LA), Inline graphic (HS), Inline graphic (DR) in the range Inline graphic. There is a relatively small variation of Inline graphic between various mammalian species. The data of Fig. 6 for HS show that the value of Inline graphic remains stable with the increase of word length. These observations are similar to those made in [13].

PageRank proximity between species

The top ten 6-letters words, with largest probabilities Inline graphic, are given for all studied species in Table 1. Two top words are identical for BT, CF, HS. To see a similarity between species on a global scale it is convenient to plot the PageRank index Inline graphic of a given species Inline graphic versus the index Inline graphic of HS for the same word Inline graphic. For identical sequences one should have all points on diagonal, while the deviations from diagonal characterize the differences between species. The examples of such PageRank proximity Inline graphic diagrams are shown in Figs. 7,8 for words at Inline graphic. A zoom of data on a small scale at the range Inline graphic is shown in Fig. 9. A visual impression is that CF case has less deviations from HS rank compared to BT and LA. The non-mammalian DR case has most strong deviations from HS rank. For BT, CF and LA cases we have a significant reduction of deviations from diagonal around Inline graphic. This effect is also visible for DR case even if being less pronounced. We do not have explanation for this observation.

Table 1. Top ten PageRank entries at DNA word length Inline graphic for species: bull BT, dog CF, elephant LA, Homo sapiens HS and zebrafish DR.

BT CF LA HS DR
TTTTTT TTTTTT AAAAAA TTTTTT ATATAT
AAAAAA AAAAAA TTTTTT AAAAAA TATATA
ATTTTT AATAAA ATTTTT ATTTTT AAAAAA
AAAAAT TTTATT AAAAAT AAAAAT TTTTTT
TTCTTT AAATAA AGAAAA TATTTT AATAAA
TTTTAA TTATTT TTTTCT AAAATA TTTATT
AAAGAA AAAAAT AAGAAA TTTTTA AAATAA
TTAAAA ATTTTT TTTCTT TAAAAA TTATTT
TTTTCT TTTTTA TTTTTA TTATTT CACACA
AGAAAA TAAAAA TAAAAA AAATAA TGTGTG

Figure 7. PageRank proximity Inline graphic plane diagrams for different species in comparison with Homo sapiens: Inline graphic-axis shows PageRank index Inline graphic of a word Inline graphic and Inline graphic-axis shows PageRank index of the same word Inline graphic with Inline graphic of bull, Inline graphic of dog, Inline graphic of elephant and Inline graphic of zebrafish; here the word length is Inline graphic.

Figure 7

The colors of symbols marks the purine content in a word Inline graphic (fractions of letters Inline graphic or Inline graphic in any order); the color varies from red at maximal content, via brown, yellow, green, light blue, to blue at minimal zero content.

Figure 8. Same as in Fig. 7 but now the color marks the fraction of of letters Inline graphic or Inline graphic in any order in a word Inline graphic with red at maximal content and blue at zero content.

Figure 8

Figure 9. Zoom of the PageRank proximity Inline graphic diagram of Fig. 8 for the range Inline graphic with the same color for Inline graphic or Inline graphic content.

Figure 9

The fraction of purine letters Inline graphic or Inline graphic in a word of Inline graphic letters is shown by color in Fig. 7 for all words ranked by PageRank index Inline graphic. We see that these letters are approximately homogeneously distributed over the whole range of Inline graphic values. In contrast to that the distribution of letters Inline graphic or Inline graphic is inhomogeneous in Inline graphic: their fraction is dominant for Inline graphic, approximately homogeneous for Inline graphic and is close to zero for Inline graphic (see Fig. 8). We find that in the whole HS sequence the fractions Inline graphic of Inline graphic are respectively Inline graphic (and Inline graphic for undetermined Inline graphic). Thus we have the fraction of Inline graphic being close to Inline graphic and the fraction of Inline graphic being Inline graphic. Thus it is more probable to have Inline graphic or Inline graphic in the whole sequence that can be a possible origin of the inhomogeneous distribution of Inline graphic or Inline graphic along Inline graphic and large fraction of Inline graphic, Inline graphic at top PageRank positions.

The whole HS sequence used here is composed from 5 humans with individual length Inline graphic. We consider the first and last fifth parts of the whole sequence Inline graphic separately thus forming two independent sequences HS1 and HS2 of two individuals. We determine for the the corresponding PageRank indexes Inline graphic and Inline graphic and show their PageRank proximity diagram in Fig. 10. In this case the points are much closer to diagonal compared to the case of comparison of HS with other species.

Figure 10. PageRank proximity Inline graphic diagram of Homo sapiens Inline graphic versus Homo sapiens Inline graphic at Inline graphic (see text for details).

Figure 10

Top panels show the content of Inline graphic (left) and Inline graphic (right) in the same way as in Fig. 8 and Fig. 7 respectively. Bottom panels show zoom of top panels.

To characterize the proximity between different species or different HS individuals we compute the average dispersion Inline graphic between two species (individuals) Inline graphic and Inline graphic. Comparing the words with length Inline graphic we find that the scaling Inline graphic works with a good accuracy (about 10% when Inline graphic is increased by a factor 16). To represent the result in a form independent of Inline graphic we compare the values of Inline graphic with the corresponding random model value Inline graphic. This value is computed assuming a random distribution of Inline graphic points in a square Inline graphic when only one point appears in each column and each line (e.g. at Inline graphic we have Inline graphic and Inline graphic). The dimensionless dispersion is then given by Inline graphic. From the ranking of different species we obtain the following values at Inline graphic: Inline graphic; Inline graphic, Inline graphic; Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic; Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic (other Inline graphic have similar values). According to this statistical analysis of PageRank proximity between species we find that Inline graphic value is minimal between CF and HS showing that these are two most similar species among those considered here.

For two HS individuals we find Inline graphic being significantly smaller then the proximity correlator between different species. We think that this PageRank proximity correlator Inline graphic can be useful as a quantitative measure of statistical proximity between various species.

Finally, in Table 2 we give for all species the words of 6 letters with the 10 minimal PageRank probabilities. Thus for HS the less probable is the word TACGCG corresponding to two amino acids Tyr and Ala. In general the ten last words are mainly composed of C and G even if the letters A and T still have small but nonzero weight. The last two words are the same for mammalian species but they are different for DR sequence.

Table 2. Ten words with minimal PageRank probability given at Inline graphic for species: bull BT, dog CF, elephant LA, Homo sapiens HS and zebrafish DR.

BT CF LA HS DR
CGCGTA TACGCG CGCGTA TACGCG CCGACG
TACGCG CGCGTA TACGCG CGCGTA CGTCGG
CGTACG TCGCGA ATCGCG CGTACG CGTCGA
CGATCG CGTACG TCGCGA TCGACG TCGACG
ATCGCG CGATCG CGCGAT CGTCGA TCGTCG
CGCGAT CGAACG GTCGCG CGATCG CCGTCG
TCGACG CGTTCG CGATCG CGTTCG CGACGG
CGTCGA TCGACG CGCGAC CGAACG CGACCG
CGTTCG CGTCGA TCGCGC CGACGA CGGTCG
TCGTCG ACGCGA ACGCGA CGCGAA CGACGA

Here the top row is the last PageRank entry, bottom is the tenth one from the end of PageRank.

Other eigenvectors of G

The properties of 10 eigenstates Inline graphic of DNA Google matrix with largest modulus of eigenvalues Inline graphic are analyzed in Table 3 and Fig. 11. The words Inline graphic at the maximal amplitude Inline graphic are presented for all species in Table 3. We see that in general these words Inline graphic are rather different from the top PageRank word Inline graphic (some words appear in pairs since there are pairs of complex conjugated values Inline graphic).

Table 3. Words Inline graphic corresponding to the maximum value of eigenvector modulus Inline graphic for species bull BT, dog CF, elephant LA, Homo sapiens HS and zebrafish DR, which are shown in dark red in Fig. 11.

i BT CF LA HS DR
1 TTTTTT TTTTTT AAAAAA TTTTTT ATATAT
2 TTTTTT AAAAAA AAAAAA TTTTTT TATATA
3 ACACAC CTCTCT AAAAAA ACACAC ATATAT
4 ACACAC AGAGAG AAAAAA ACACAC TAGATA
5 CACACA CTCTCT AAAAAA TTTTTT ATAGAT
6 CACACA TCTCTC AAAAAA CACACA TATCTA
7 CCAGGC AGAGAG TATGAG TGGGAG ATCTAT
8 CCAGGC AGAGAG TATGAG TGGGAG TAGATA
9 CCCATG TGTGTG TTTTTT CACACA ATAGAT
10 CCCATG TGTGTG AGAGTA TTTTTT TATCTA

The eigenvectors at Inline graphic correspond to the ten largest eigenvalues Inline graphic of the DNA Google matrix for DNA word length Inline graphic. The first row Inline graphic corresponds to top PageRank entries.

Figure 11. Dependence of eigenstates amplitude Inline graphic on PageRank index Inline graphic in Inline graphic-axis and eigenvalue index Inline graphic in Inline graphic-axis for largest ten eigenvalues Inline graphic counted by Inline graphic from Inline graphic at Inline graphic to Inline graphic at Inline graphic.

Figure 11

The range Inline graphic is shown with PageRank vector for a given species at the bottom line of each panel. For each species in each panel the color is proportional to Inline graphic changing from blue at zero to red at maximal amplitude value which is close to unity in each panel. The panels show the species: bull BT (top left), dog CF (top right), elephant LA (bottom left), Homo sapiens HS (bottom right).

The probability of the above top 10 eigenstates as a function of PageRank index Inline graphic are shown in Fig. 11. We see that the majority of the vectors, different from the PageRank vector, have well localized peaks at relatively large values Inline graphic. This shows that in the DNA network there are some modes located on certain specific patterns of words.

To illustrated the localized structure of eigenmodes Inline graphic for HS case at Inline graphic we compute the inverse participation ratio Inline graphic which gives an approximate number of nodes on which the main probability of an eigenstate Inline graphic is located (see e.g. [4], [21], [26]). The obtained values are Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic, Inline graphic for Inline graphic respectively. We see that for Inline graphic we have significantly smaller Inline graphic values compared to the case of PageRank vector with a large Inline graphic. This supports the conclusion about localized structure of a large fraction of eigenvectors of Inline graphic.

In [22] on an example of Wikipedia network it is shown that the eigenstates with relatively large Inline graphic select specific communities of the network. The detection of communities in complex networks is now an active research direction [27]. We expect that the eigenmodes of G matrix can select specific words of bioniformatic interest. However, a detailed analysis of words from eigenmodes remains for further more detailed investigations.

Discussion

In this work we used long DNA sequences of various species to construct from them the Markov process describing the probabilistic transitions between words of up to 7 letters length. We construct the Google matrix of such transitions with the size up to Inline graphic and analyze the statistical properties of its matrix elements. We show that for all 5 species, studied in this work, the matrix elements of significant amplitude have a power law distribution with the exponent Inline graphic being close to the exponent of outgoing links distribution typical for WWW and other complex directed networks with Inline graphic. The distribution of significant values of the sum of ingoing matrix elements of Inline graphic is also described by a power law with the exponent Inline graphic which is significantly larger than the corresponding exponent for WWW networks with Inline graphic. We show that similar to the WWW networks the exponent Inline graphic determines the exponent Inline graphic of the algebraic PageRank decay which is significantly smaller then its value for WWW networks with Inline graphic. The PageRank decay is similar to the frequency decay of various words studied previously in [13]. It is interesting to note that the value Inline graphic is close to the exponent of Poincaré recurrences decay which has a value close to 4 [12] (even if we cannot derive a direct mathematical relation between them).

Using PageRank vectors of various species we introduce the PageRank proximity correlator Inline graphic which allows to measure in a quantitative way the proximity between different species. This parameter remains stable in respect to variation of the word length.

The spectrum of the Google matrix is determined and it is shown that it is characterized by a significant gap between Inline graphic and other eigenvalues. Thus, this spectrum is qualitatively different from the WWW case where the gap is absent at the damping factor Inline graphic. We show that the eigenmodes with largest values of Inline graphic are well localized on specific words and we argue that the words corresponding to such localized modes can play an interesting role in bioinformatic properties of DNA sequences.

Finally we would like to trace parallels between the Google matrix analysis of words in DNA sequences and the small world properties of human language. Indeed, it is known that the frequency of words in natural languages follows a power law Zipf distribution with the exponent Inline graphic [28]. The parallels between words distributions in DNA sequences and statistical linguistics were already pointed in [13]. The analysis of degree distributions of undirected networks of words in natural languages was found to follow a power law with an exponent Inline graphic [29] being not so far from the one found here for the matrix elements distribution. It is argued that the language evolution plays an important role in the formation of such a distribution in languages [30]. The parallels between linguistics and DNA sequence complexity are actively discussed in bioinformatics [31], [32]. We think that the Google matrix analysis can provide new insights in the construction and characterization of information flows on DNA sequence networks extending recent steps done in [33].

In summary, our results show that the distributions of significant matrix elements are similar to those of the scale-free type networks like WWW, Wikipedia and linguistic networks. In analogy with lingusitic networks it can be useful to go from words network analysis to a more advanced functional level of links inside sentences that may be viewed as a network of links between amino acids or more complex biological constructions.

Supporting Information

Supporting Information S1

Supplementary methods, references, tables, sequences data and figures are available at: http://www.quantware.ups-tlse.fr/QWLIB/dnagooglematrix/.

(TXT)

Acknowledgments

We thank K.M.Frahm for useful discussions and help in collection of DNA sequences from [12] which are studied here.

Funding Statement

This research is supported in part by the EC FET Open project “New tools and algorithms for directed network analysis” (NADINE No. 288956); the France-Armenia collaboration grant CNRS/SCS No. 24943 (IE-017) on “Classical and quantum chaos”; VK is supported by CNRS – Region Midi-Pyrénées grant. No additional external funding received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

Supporting Information S1

Supplementary methods, references, tables, sequences data and figures are available at: http://www.quantware.ups-tlse.fr/QWLIB/dnagooglematrix/.

(TXT)


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