Multifractal Analysis of Chaos Game Representation Images of Mitochondrial DNA

Chaos Game Representation (CGR) is an iterative mapping method which can convert a nucleotide sequence into a unique and scale-independent image. In CGR image of a DNA sequence both global and local patterns are displayed. These images allow us to investigate hidden self-similar patterns in genomic sequences. In this paper the fractal properties of these images have been quantified by fractal dimension calculation and fractal quantitative characteristics of CGR images have been considered by multifractal analysis to evaluate the possible evolutionary properties of the CGR images of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in 10 different species. The multifractal spectra of CGR images of mtDNA sequences revealed that there is some evolutionary information in them which is applicable in phylogenetic studies. Further studies can help to establish a novel hypothesis on the application of fractal dimensions of CGR images of mtDNA for reconstructing phylogeny. .