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Updated: Mar 23, 2026

Hi-C: A Method to Study the Three-dimensional Architecture of Genomes.
Published on: May 6, 2010
Distribution of human single-nucleotide polymorphisms is approximated by the power law and represents a fractal
Norio Gouda1, Yuh Shiwa2, Motohiro Akashi3
1Department of Systems Medicine, Sakaguchi Laboratory, Keio University School of Medicine, 35 Shinanomachi, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 160-8582, Japan.
Abstract:
Single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are one of the main causes of evolution. The distribution of human SNPs, which were examined in detail genomewide, was analyzed. Three discrete databases of human SNPs were used for this analysis, and similar results were obtained from these databases. It was found that the distribution of the distance between SNPs was approximated by the power law, and the shape of the regions including SNPs had the so-called fractal structure. Although the reason why the distribution of SNPs obeys such a certain law of physics is unclear, a speculation was attempted in connection with the three-dimensional structure of human chromatin which has a fractal structure.
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