Statistical significance and biological relevance of a sinusoidal pattern detected in translational free energy signals

Interactions of the ribosome with the mRNA constitute the mechanism of translation in bacteria. We hypothesize that a variable free energy pattern arising from repeated hybridizations of the rRNA tail with a moving window of mRNA sequence could encode information required to maintain translational reading frame. If present, this signal should exist in all coding regions and signal processing methods should prove valuable in characterizing and decoding this signal. Our analysis shows that a variable energy pattern does exist and it can be modeled as a discrete sinusoidal signal of frequency 1/3 cycles/base in approximately 65% of verified coding regions. For the remaining 35% of coding regions, a low signal-to-noise ratio is the most likely explanation of the apparent absence of a detectable periodic signal.