Non-extensive trends in the size distribution of coding and non-coding DNA sequences in the human genome

We study the primary DNA structure of four of the most completely sequenced human chromosomes (including chromosome 19 which is the most dense in coding), using non-extensive statistics. We show that the exponents governing the spatial decay of the coding size distributions vary between 5.2 ≤r ≤5.7 for the short scales and 1.45 ≤q ≤1.50 for the large scales. On the contrary, the exponents governing the spatial decay of the non-coding size distributions in these four chromosomes, take the values 2.4 ≤r ≤3.2 for the short scales and 1.50 ≤q ≤1.72 for the large scales. These results, in particular the values of the tail exponent q, indicate the existence of correlations in the coding and non-coding size distributions with tendency for higher correlations in the non-coding DNA. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006