Analysis of Serine V Arms

In the above network, connected components containing fewer than four nodes have been removed for visual clarity. The tRNASer V arm network consists of three medium-sized components with between 32 and 47 distinct V arm sequences in each cluster, as well as several smaller components containing fewer than 15 distinct V arm sequences. This is in contrast to the tRNALeu V arm network, which has one large component with 128 distinct sequences, one small component with 12 distinct sequences, and the remaining components have only one or two distinct sequences. Additionally, the tRNASer network components are loosely connected (low edge-to-node ratio), whereas the main component of the tRNALeu network is more densely connected. These results are expected because it is known from previous research that tRNASer V arm sequences are more genetically diverse than tRNALeu V arm sequences.

While most components have a predominant sequence length, there is one cluster which has twelve sequences with a sequence length of 14 and seventeen sequences with a sequence length of 15, as well as three sequences with a sequence length of 16. The sequences in this cluster are therefore prime candidates for further analysis to try to find connections to other clusters.