Dimensions of fractals related to languages defined by tagged strings in complete genomes

A representation of frequency of strings of length Ii in complete genomes o f many organisms in a square has led to seemingly selfsimilar patterns when K increases, These patterns are caused by under-represented strings with a certain "tag"-string and they define some fractals in the K --> infinity l imit, The Box and Hausdorff dimensions of the limit set are discussed, Alth ough the method proposed by Mauldin and Williams to calculate Box and Hausd orff dimension is valid in our case, a different and sampler method is prop osed in this paper. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.