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Minimum number of base pairs required to find a unique sequence

Range	20 - 23 Unitless
Organism	bacteria
Reference	Wunderlich Z, Mirny LA. Different gene regulation strategies revealed by analysis of binding motifs. Trends Genet. 2009 Oct25(10):434-40. p.435 right column 2nd paragraphPubMed ID19815308
Method	Information theory dictates that finding a unique object among N alternatives requires Imin=log2N bits of information (Figure 1) [Cover, T.M. and Thomas, J.A. (1991) Elements of Information Theory, Wiley-Interscience]. Similarly, a minimum of Imin=log2N bits of information is needed to specify a unique address in a genome containing N possible sites for a TF to bind (i.e. N bp).
Comments	See BNID 106185
Entered by	Uri M
ID	106184