An integer period DFT for biological sequence processing

Detection of periodicity in symbolic sequences such as DNA is of considerable interest in a number of applications, however fast, accurate algorithms are needed for measuring spectral content at multiple integer periods. This paper describes an integer period discrete Fourier transform (IPDFT), presents a new algorithm for its implementation, and discusses applications to DNA sequence analysis. Evaluations on DNA sequence data show that the IPDFT may be a more suitable tool for periodicity analysis than an existing widely used correlation-based approach.