SCALING DETECTION IN EXTRACHROMOSOMAL DNA

In this work, we study the statistical correlations in mitochondrial and chloroplastid genomes using the diffusion entropy analysis method and estimate the value of the Hurst exponent using the detrended fluctuation analysis. We compare the scaling exponents of both methods for three sets of genomes: mitochondrial DNA from organisms belonging to the plantae and animalia kingdoms and chloroplast DNA. We find that a wide variety of behaviors depart from the Lévy statistics previously proposed for DNA sequences.