Abstract

We present a model for genome evolution, comprising biologically plausible events such as transpositions inside the genome and insertions of exogenous sequences. This model attempts to formulate a minimal proposition accounting for key statistical properties of genomes, avoiding, as far as possible, unsupportable hypotheses for the remote evolutionary past. The statistical properties that are observed in genomic sequences and are reproduced by the proposed model are: (i) deviations from randomness at different length scales, measured by suitable algorithms, (ii) a special form of size distribution (power law distribution) characterising different levels of genome organisation in the non‐coding, and (iii) extensive resemblance in the alternation of coding and non‐coding regions at several length scales (self‐similarity) in long genomic sequences of higher eukaryotes. BioEssays 23:647–656, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.