On the fractal analysis of gene sequences involved in atherosclerosis by binary image indicator matrix

Abstract

In this paper, the gene sequences involved in Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) were analyzed by fractal analysis. In order to obtain a quantitative characterization of nucleotide patterns and to identify anomalies and singularities belonging to genes, the fractal dimension (FD) and lacunarity were studied as fractal parameters. To obtain accurateparametric values, the Binary Image Indicator Matrix (BIIM) was used. This method converts uni-dimensional sequences into 2-D images preserving the autocorrelation.The results show like the fractal values of genes CAD are very similar to the random sequences. In particular, all FD values fall in the range 1.20 -1.22 highlighting that the complexity/fractality is the same and suggesting that all genes equally contribute to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis from statistical point a view. These results are in accordance with the biological studies that indicate CAD as a multi-factorial process, so that these values could be considered as characteristics for these genes.