A Method for the Structure-Based, Genome-Wide Analysis of Bacterial Intergenic Sequences Identifies Shared Compositional and Functional Features

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a computational strategy for performing genome-wide analyses of intergenic sequences in bacterial genomes. Following similar directions of a previous paper, where a method for genome-wide analysis of eucaryotic Intergenic sequences was proposed, here we developed a tool for implementing similar concepts in bacteria genomes. This allows us to (i) classify intergenic sequences into clusters, characterized by specific global structural features and (ii) draw possible relations with their functional features.