Saturday, July 22, 2023

Pangenome - 3

Fig. 1 Look Ma!
Viruses Made of Atoms!
I. Background

When I was constructing the first post (Pangenome) of this series I derived a meaning for "pangenome" from the web/blog site "HPRC".

Possibly the better place to begin would have been to consider the operative word that frames the meaning of "genome" in context:

pan-

word-forming element meaning "all, every, whole, all-inclusive," from Greek pan-, combining form of pas (neuter pan, masculine and neuter genitive pantos) "all," from PIE *pant- "all" (with derivatives found only in Greek and Tocharian).

Commonly used as a prefix in Greek (before a labial pam-; before a guttural pag-), in modern times often with nationality names, the first example of which seems to have been Panslavism (1846). Also panislamic (1881), pan-American (1889), pan-German (1892), pan-African (1900), pan-European (1901), pan-Arabism (1930).

(Etymology, emphasis added). In other words "Pan-HumanGenome" might have been a better derivation than "Pangenome".

Now the HPRC has updated themselves with a "draft" (A draft human pangenome reference) that is said to be able to get improvements updated by, among other things, filling in the 'N' nucleotide gaps in existing human chromosome data.

That is a worthwhile start because there are hundreds of 'N' placeholders instead of 'A', 'C', 'G', 'T' and/or 'U' nucleotides in the chromosome genomes in current databases.

II. Pan-Atomic

The atomic nitty gritty was brought up in the second post of this series, that is, that DNA and RNA are composed of a small group of only four atom-types, i.e. Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Oxygen (Pangenome - 2, Fig. 1)!

In that post I presented almost fifty thousand DNA and/or RNA sequences that had been analyzed to determine the atomic content and percentages by type/quantity of atoms in those genomes.

The surprising thing about that was the similarities in the atomic make up (percentage of atom types) within many different types of creatures and viruses.

Today, that atomic analysis continues but I am using the new viruses discovered in the ocean fairly recently (Thousands of new viruses discovered in the ocean).

In Fig. 2 below, three complete DNA genomes (gathered by the folks who wrote the paper) are linked to.

The percentage/ratios of the atom types are also listed (Tables 1-3).

Finally, there is a summary featuring those three tables (Fig. 3)


Fig. 2




Table: 1
Link and genome info: JAAOEI010000001.1
Viral metagenome NODE_1_length_147131_cov_7.178554


Nucleotide count: 147,131

Atom Count Percent
Carbon 693,535 32.06
Hydrogen 767,852 35.49
Nitrogen 554,824 25.65
Oxygen 147,164 6.80
Totals 2,163,375 100.00



Table: 2
Link and genome info: JAAOEI010000002.1
Viral metagenome NODE_2_length_79887_cov_6.251428


Nucleotide count: 79,887

Atom Count Percent
Carbon 386,320 32.65
Hydrogen 427,574 36.14
Nitrogen 288,788 24.41
Oxygen 80,521 6.81
Totals 1,183,203 100.00



Table: 3
Link and genome info: JAAOEI010000003.1
Viral metagenome NODE_3_length_78338_cov_84.761340


Nucleotide count: 78,338

Atom Count Percent
Carbon 370,586 32.09
Hydrogen 408,577 35.38
Nitrogen 298,821 25.87
Oxygen 76,957 6.66
Totals 1,154,941 100.00



Fig. 3


Summary information for above three tables:
Atom High
Percent
Entity Low
Percent
Entity Variation
Percent
Carbon 32.65 JAAOEI010000002.1 32.06 JAAOEI010000001.1 0.59
Hydrogen 36.14 JAAOEI010000002.1 35.38 JAAOEI010000003.1 0.76
Nitrogen 25.87 JAAOEI010000003.1 24.41 JAAOEI010000002.1 1.47
Oxygen 6.81 JAAOEI010000002.1 6.66 JAAOEI010000003.1 0.14



III. Results

As you can see in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, the percentages of atoms by type in recently found and previously unknown virus genomes are surprisingly close percentage matches (less than 2% variation).

The previous results in the previous post of this series were close too (Pangenome - 2).

IV. Closing Comments

I have stumbled upon another unknown.

The mixture of atoms in all those genomes is problematic:

"And we come up with this basic plot, which is the two first elements are hydrogen and helium, which are created about 13.8, 13.9 billion years ago in the big bang. And everything else on this plot the astronomers called metals, but everything else is created in a supernova, not our star. A very hot short life star ... and then there's carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen ... so these elements form the nucleic acids ... How did we get the nucleic acids? We don't really know."

(Dr. Falkowski, video below). We don't really know how a group of atoms of different origin locations and birthdays "got together" to become nucleic acids (The Doll As Metaphor - 6).

I have a suspicion that geneticists won't like my atomic percentages discovery because it really makes their teleological lives more difficult.

Enter the Shakespearean play spoken in the "teleology language" (On The Origin of The Containment Entity - 8).

The teleology as a reaction to "we don't know" goes back to a Latin speaking priest "Lemaître" who began the Big Bang hypothesis.

There are those who are still doubling down on that Big Bang 'sermon' (Universe will end with a bang, or a whimper, says Vatican astronomer). 

But it does not end there folks, no, it's a bigger bang than ever now, yep, Panbiggaboom Zen (Small Brains Considered - 7).

The previous post in this series is here.