{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,29]],"date-time":"2025-09-29T08:40:14Z","timestamp":1759135214893,"version":"3.44.0"},"reference-count":67,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"10","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,28]],"date-time":"2025-09-28T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1759017600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"name":"spanish Junta de Andaluc\u00eda","award":["FQM-362"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["FQM-362"]}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.mdpi.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Entropy"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The concept of a genome signature broadly refers to characteristic patterns in DNA sequences that enable the identification and comparison of species or individuals, often without requiring sequence alignment. Such signatures have applications ranging from forensic identification of individuals to cancer genomics. In comparative genomics and evolutionary biology, genome signatures typically rely on statistical properties of DNA that are species-specific and carry phylogenetic information reflecting evolutionary relationships. We propose a novel genome signature based on the compositional structure of DNA, defined by the distributions of strong\/weak, purine\/pyrimidine, and keto\/amino ratios across DNA segments identified through entropic segmentation. We observe that these ratio distributions are similar among closely related species but differ markedly between distant ones. To quantify these differences, we employ the Jensen\u2013Shannon distance\u2014a symmetric and robust measure of distributional dissimilarity\u2014to define a genome-to-genome distance metric, termed Segment Compositional Distance (D). Our results demonstrate a clear correlation between D and species divergence times, and also that this metric captures a strong phylogenetic signal. Our method employs a genome-wide approach rather than tracking specific mutations; thus, D offers a coarse-grained perspective on genome compositional evolution, contributing to the ongoing discussion surrounding the molecular clock hypothesis.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/e27101019","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,29]],"date-time":"2025-09-29T08:00:32Z","timestamp":1759132832000},"page":"1019","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Genome Divergence Based on Entropic Segmentation of DNA"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"27","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2895-3116","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Pedro A.","family":"Bernaola-Galv\u00e1n","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Applied Physics II, University of M\u00e1laga, 29071 M\u00e1laga, Spain"},{"name":"Institute Carlos I for Theoretical and Computational Physics, University of M\u00e1laga, 29071 M\u00e1laga, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-5568-0216","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Pedro","family":"Carpena","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Applied Physics II, University of M\u00e1laga, 29071 M\u00e1laga, Spain"},{"name":"Institute Carlos I for Theoretical and Computational Physics, University of M\u00e1laga, 29071 M\u00e1laga, Spain"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0866-4103","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Cristina","family":"G\u00f3mez-Mart\u00edn","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Genetics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain"},{"name":"Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Institute of Biotechnology, Center of Biomedical Research, University of Granada, 18100 Granada, Spain"},{"name":"Department of Pathology, Cancer Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Medical Center, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0216-0393","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jos\u00e9 L.","family":"Oliver","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Genetics, Faculty of Sciences, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain"},{"name":"Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Institute of Biotechnology, Center of Biomedical Research, University of Granada, 18100 Granada, Spain"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,9,28]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"547","article-title":"Patterns of nucleotide composition in bacterial genomes","volume":"271","author":"Karlin","year":"1997","journal-title":"J. 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