Binary Segmentation Procedure for Detecting Change Points in a DNA Sequence

Abstract

It is interesting to locate homogeneous segments within a DNA sequence. Suppose that the DNA sequence has segments within which the observations follow the same residue frequency distribution, and between which observations have different distributions. In this setting, change points correspond to the end points of these segments. This article explores the use of a binary segmentation procedure in detecting the change points in the DNA sequence. The change points are determined using a sequence of nested hypothesis tests of whether a change point exists. At each test, we compare no change-point model with a single change-point model by using the Bayesian information criterion. Thus, the method circumvents the computational complexity one would normally face in problems with an unknown number of change points. We illustrate the procedure by analyzing the genome of the bacteriophage lambda.