A statistical feature of Hurst exponents of essential genes in bacterial genomes

Abstract

At present, methods for determining essential genes depend on biochemical experiments. There is therefore a demand for the development of analysis methods and software for identifying essential genes, based on the common features of these genes. In this study, we employed the Hurst exponent as a characteristic parameter and analyzed its distribution among nine bacterial species. We found that most of the significance levels of the Hurst exponents of essential genes were higher than those of the corresponding full-gene-set. Conversely, most of the significance levels of the Hurst exponents of nonessential genes remained unchanged or only increased slightly. Therefore, we propose that this feature represents a restraint for pre- or post-design checking of bacterial essential genes in computer-aided design.