Topological information content of genetic molecules—I.

Abstract

In this paper an effort has been made to obtain the topological information content of (i) the four bases of DNA and uracil, (ii) the nucleotides of DNA and RNA, (iii) the 64 nucleotide triplets of RNA and (iv) the twenty amino acids. By defining first-order neighborhoods of the vertices of the chemical graph of a molecule, a topology is established (which may be termed first-order topology). An equivalence relation is thereafter defined on the set of vertices of this graph to get the disjoint classes of equivalent atoms in the configuration, and with the help of Shannon's formula [19], first-order topological information contents of such molecules are calculated. From this measure of information content it appears that the topological information content, rather than the non-topological one, is more pronounced for bases of nucleic acids as well as for nucleotides. This result may give a clearer picture of information processing at the cellular level of a living system.