Employing Estimative Reaction Free Energy to Recognize Constitutive and Alternative Splice Sites
使用估计的反应自由能预测组成性和可变剪接位点

An important step in the prediction of the gene structure is to recognize the splice sites accurately. Based on the point of basic physical principle in splicing reaction, the maximum information principle is applied in theoretical analysis of the splicing reaction, and a reaction free energy expression is deduced. As a coarse-grained theoretical tool, the expression can be used to estimate the free energy change during splicing reaction involving a 5' or 3' splice site. It contains not only all kinds of dependencies among both adjacent and non-adjacent bases, but also the background probability factors. By use of the reaction free energy expression to predict constitutive and alternative splice sites in human genes, the results are satisfactory. The prediction ability of the expression is comparable with other methods. This demonstrates that it is appropriate to employ the maximum information principle as a theoretical model in the research of splicing reaction, and the reaction free energy expression corresponds well to the splicing reaction process.