we have discovered a DNA sequence repeated through our genome. We have also discovered this sequence in closely related species. I am wondering what are the mathematical approaches that I may use to prove that it's not a randomly occurring sequence and has a significance?
bacterial genome. We found a sequence motif of 40 bp which repeats only in the intergenic regions. Also present in closely related species. How ever I want to apply some calculations to prove that it's not just randomly occurring sequence.
The approaches identified by Laurent look good. The idea of calculating the probability of your specific sequences among all other possibilities can be extended - some sequences are found more frequently in living organisms than other, so you could adjust the statistics based on observed data from e.g. NCBI, or adjust for the known distributions of GC content or kmer content.
You could also take a simulation approach - if you simulate large numbers of instances of molecules, with a given evolutionary model, how frequently does that particular sequence turn up in the simulations?
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