Species independence of mutual information in coding and noncoding DNA

We explore if there exist universal statistical patterns that are different in coding and noncoding DNA and can be found in all living organisms, rega rdless of their phylogenetic origin. We find that (i) the mutual informatio n function I has a significantly different functional form in coding and no ncoding DNA. We further find that (ii) the probability distributions of the average mutual information (I) over bar are significantly different in cod ing and noncoding DNA, while (iii) they are almost the same for organisms o f all taxonomic classes. Surprisingly, we find that (I) over bar is capable of predicting coding regions as accurately as organism-specific coding mea sures.