A Binary Model of Repetitive DNA Sequence in Caenorhabditis elegans

Abstract

A great amount of genomic DNA in multcellular eukaryotic organisms is regarded as junk because it has no real function in protein coding. However, there is growing evidence that noncoding DNA can play a vital role in the regulation of gene expression during development (Lee et al., 1993). This indicates that the so-called junk DNA may have essential functions that are yet to be found (Nowak, 1994). A novel binary model of noncoding repetitive DNA sequence is proposed to illustrate its possible structure and implications in genome organization and development.