Energy–entropy dispersion relation in DNA sequences

For a number of virus- and bacterium genomes we use the concept of block entropy from information theory and compare it with the corresponding configurational energy, defined via the ionization energies of the nucleotides and a hopping term for their interactions in the sense of a tight-binding model. Additionally to the four-letter alphabet of the nucleotides we discuss a reduction to a two-letter alphabet. We find a well defined relation between block entropy and block energy for a not too large block length which can be interpreted as a generalized dispersion relation for all genome sequences. The relation can be used to look for enhanced interactions between virus and bacterium genomes. Well known examples for virus–virus and virus–bacterium interactions are analyzed along this line.