IS DNA A LANGUAGE

DNA sequences usually involve local construction rules that affect dif ferent scales. As such their ''dictionary'' may not follow Zipf's law (a power law) which is followed in every natural language. Indeed, ana lysis of many DNA sequences suggests that no linguistics connections t o DNA exist and that even though it has structure DNA is not a languag e. Computer simulations and a biological approach to this problem furt her support these results. (C) 1997 Academic Press Limited