55. The Genetic Code revisited


How to represent the genetic code? Despite the fact that it is extensively known,
the DNA mapping into proteins remains as one of the relevant discoveries of genetics.
However, modern genomic signal processing usually requires converting symbolic-DNA strings into
complex-valued signals in order to take full advantage of a broad variety of DSP techniques.
The genetic code is revisited in this paper, addressing alternative representations for it,
which can be worthy for genomic signal processing. Three original representations are discussed.
The inner-to-out map builds on the unbalanced role of nucleotides of a codon, and it seems to be
suitable for handling information-theory-based matter. The two-dimensional Gray map representation
is
offered as a mathematically structured map that can help interpreting spectrograms
and scalograms.
Finally, the world-map representation for the genetic code is investigated, which can particularly
be valuable for educational purposes, besides furnishing plenty of room for application of distance-based algorithms.