Compositional asymmetries and predicted origins of replication of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome

We analyze correlations of base skews and origins of replication in the chromosomes of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Putative origins of replication are predicted by extracting all genomic matches of an 11-base-pair consensus sequence of yeast autonomously replicating sequences (ARS), WTTTAYRTTTW. Although distances between polarity switches of the GC-skew and predicted ARS are shorter than expected when assuming a uniform distribution, further analyses reveal that the observed tendency is mostly a result of a clustering of the determined base skew polarity switches. It is concluded that the GC-skew does not give additional information about the location of chromosomal origins of replication in S. cerevisiae.