Prediction of replication origins by calculating DNA structural properties

In this study, we introduced two DNA structural characteristics, namely, bendability and hydroxyl radical cleavage intensity to analyze origin of replication (ORI) in the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome. We found that both DNA bendability and cleavage intensity in core replication regions were significantly lower than in the linker regions. By using these two DNA structural characteristics, we developed a computational model for ORI prediction and evaluated the model in a benchmark dataset. The predictive performance of the jackknife cross-validation indicates that DNA bendability and cleavage intensity have the ability to describe core replication regions and our model is effective in ORI prediction.

► DNA bendability and cleavage intensity were analyzed in replication regions.
► Structural differences were observed between replication regions and linker regions.
► A novel computational model was proposed for replication origin prediction.