The fractal structure of the mitochondrial genomes

The mitochondrial DNA genome has a definite multifractal structure. We show that loops, hairpins and inverted palindromes are responsible for this self-similarity. We can thus establish a definite relation between the function of subsequences and their fractal dimension. Intriguingly, protein coding DNAs also exhibit palindromic structures, although they do not appear in the sequence of amino acids. These structures may reflect the stabilization and transcriptional control of DNA or the control of posttranscriptional editing of mRNA.