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Updated: Feb 9, 2026

Identifying Amino Acid Overproducers Using Rare-Codon-Rich Markers
Published on: June 24, 2019
Application of the Ramanujan Fourier Transform for the analysis of secondary structure content in amino acid
L T Mainardi1, L Pattini, S Cerutti
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Polytechnic University of Milan, 20133 Milano, Italy. luca.mainardi@biomed.polimi.it
Objective:
A novel method is presented for the investigation of protein properties of sequences using Ramanujan Fourier Transform (RFT).
Methods:
The new methodology involves the preprocessing of protein sequence data by numerically encoding it and then applying the RFT. The RFT is based on projecting the obtained numerical series on a set of basis functions constituted by Ramanujan sums (RS). In RS components, periodicities of finite integer length, rather than frequency, (as in classical harmonic analysis) are considered.
Results:
The potential of the new approach is documented by a few examples in the analysis of hydrophobic profiles of proteins in two classes including abundance of alpha-helices (group A) or beta-strands (group B). Different patterns are provided as evidence.
Conclusions:
RFT can be used to characterize the structural properties of proteins and integrate complementary information provided by other signal processing transforms.
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