Scaling laws in the functional content of genomes

Erik van Nimwegen

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Scaling laws in the functional content of genomes

Erik van Nimwegen

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Abstract

With the number of sequenced genomes now over one hundred, and the availability of rough functional annotations for a substantial proportion of their genes, it has become possible to study the statistics of gene content across genomes. Here I show that, for many high-level functional categories, the number of genes in the category scales as a power-law in the total number of genes in the genome. The occurrence of such scaling laws can be explained with a simple theoretical model, and this model suggests that the exponents of the observed scaling laws correspond to universal constants of the evolutionary process. I discuss some consequences of these scaling laws for our understanding of organism design.

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Erik van Nimwegen. 2003-07-01. Scaling laws in the functional content of genomes. https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0307001

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