p-Adic hierarchical properties of the genetic code

• Published in: BioSystems Vol. 185; p. 104017
• Main Authors: Dragovich, Branko, Mišić, Nataša Ž.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ireland Elsevier B.V 01.11.2019
• Subjects: Amino acids; Amino Acids - genetics; Animals; Base Sequence; Bioinformation; Codon - genetics; Evolution, Molecular; Fractals; Genetic code; Genetic Code - genetics; Genetic language; Genome, Mitochondrial - genetics; Models, Genetic; Nucleotides - genetics; p-Adic distance; p-Adic network; Ultrametric codon tree; Vertebrates - classification; Vertebrates - genetics; Ultrametric codon tree; Genetic code; p-Adic network; Genetic language; Amino acids; p-Adic distance; Bioinformation
• ISSN: 0303-2647; 1872-8324; 1872-8324
• DOI: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2019.104017

In this article, we consider p-adic modeling of the standard genetic code and the vertebrate mitochondrial one. To this end, we use 5-adic and 2-adic distance as a mathematical tool to describe closeness (nearness, similarity) between codons as elements of a bioinformation space. Codons which are simultaneously at the smallest 5-adic and 2-adic distance code the same (or similar) amino acid or stop signal. The set of codons is presented as an ultrametric tree as well as a fractal and p-adic network. It is shown that genetic code can be treated as sequential translation between genetic languages. This p-adic approach gives possibility to be applied to sequences of nucleotides of an arbitrary finite length. We present an overview of published and some new results on various p-adic properties of the genetic code.