A topological characterization of DNA sequences based on chaos geometry and persistent homology

Abstract

Methods for analyzing similarities among DNA sequences play a fundamental role in computational biology, and have a variety of applications in public health, and in the field of genetics. In this paper, a novel geometric and topological method for analyzing similarities among DNA sequences is developed, based on persistent homology from algebraic topology, in combination with chaos geometry in 4-dimensional space as a graphical representation of DNA sequences. Our topological framework for DNA similarity analysis is general, alignment-free, and can deal with DNA sequences of various lengths, while proving first-of-the-kind visualization features for visual inspection of DNA sequences directly, based on topological features of point clouds that represent DNA sequences. As an application, we test our methods on three datasets including genome sequences of different types of Hantavirus, Influenza A viruses, and Human Papillomavirus.