Expanding the Grammar of Biology

We metaphorically call “Grammar of Biology” a small field of genomic research, whose main objective is to search for DNA sequence intrinsic properties. Erwin Chargaff inaugurated it back in 50s, but since then little progress has been made. It remained almost neglected until early 90s, when Vinayakumar V. Prabhu made a major contribution determining the Symmetry Principle. Remarkably, during the “Grammar of Biology” development, different sciences have contributed, for instance, Chargaff used his Chemistry background to discover the so-called Chargaff’s rules; taking advantage of several publicly available genomic sequences, and through Computational and Statistical analyses, Prabhu identified the Symmetry Principle and, recently, using a Mathematical approach, we have discovered four new Generalized Chargaff’s rules. Our work has expanded the “Grammar of Biology”, and created the conceptual and theoretical framework necessary to further developments.