Finding borders between coding and noncoding DNA regions by an entropic segmentation method

We present a new computational approach to finding borders between coding a nd noncoding DNA. This approach has two features: (i) DNA sequences are des cribed by a 12-letter alphabet that captures the differential base composit ion at each codon position, and (ii) the search for the borders is carried out by means of an entropic;segmentation method which uses only the general statistical properties of coding DNA. We find that this method is highly a ccurate in finding borders between coding and noncoding regions and require s no "prior training" on known data sets. Our results appear to be more acc urate than those obtained with moving windows in the discrimination of codi ng from noncoding DNA.