COMPRESSION AND GENETIC SEQUENCE-ANALYSIS

A novel approach to genetic sequence analysis is presented. This appro ach, based on compression of algorithms, has been launched simultaneou sly by Grumbach and Tahi, Milosavljevic and Rivals. To reduce the desc ription of an object, a compression algorithm replaces some regulariti es in the description by special codes. Thus a compression algorithm c an be applied to a sequence in order to study the presence of those re gularities all over the sequence. This paper explains this ability, gi ves examples of compression algorithms already developed and mentions their applications. Finally, the theoretical foundations of the approa ch are presented in an overview of the algorithmic theory of informati on.