New approaches for computer analysis of nucleic acid sequences.

A new high-speed computer algorithm is outlined that ascertains within and between nucleic acid and protein sequences all direct repeats, dyad symmetries, and other structural relationships. Large repeats, repeats of high frequency, dyad symmetries of specified stem length and loop distance, and their distributions are determined. Significance of homologies is assessed by a hierarchy of permutation procedures. Applications are made to papovaviruses, the human papillomavirus HPV, lambda phage, the human and mouse mitochondrial genomes, and the human and mouse immunoglobulin kappa-chain genes.