On the nadeau-taylor theory of conserved chromosome segments

Abstract

The quantification of comparative genomics dates from 1984 with the work of Nadeau and Taylor on estimating interchromosomal exchange rates based on the rearrangement of chromosomal segments in human versus mouse genomes. We reformulate their analysis in terms of a probabilistic model based on spatial homogeneity and independence of breakpoints and gene distribution. We study the marginal distribution of the number of genes per segment and the distribution of the number of non- empty segments as a function of the number of genes and segments. We propose a rapid algorithm for identifying a given number of conserved segments in noisy comparative map data. Finally, we propose a model which incorporates a degree of inhomogeneity in the distribution of genes and/or breakpoints. Comparative maps of human and mouse genomes serve as test data throughout.