Restricting SBH Ambiguity via Restriction Enzymes

Abstract. The expected number of n-base long sequences consistent with a given SBH spectrum grows exponentially with n, which severely limits the potential range of applicability of SBH even in an error-free setting. Restriction enzymes (RE) recognize specific patterns and cut the DNA molecule at all locations of that pattern. The output of a restriction assay is the set of lengths of the resulting fragments. By augmenting the SBH spectrum with the target string’s RE spectrum, we can eliminate much of the ambiguity of SBH. In this paper, we build on [20] to enhance the resolving power of restriction enzymes. We give a hardness result for the SBH+RE problem, and supply improved heuristics for the existing backtracking algorithm. We prove a lower bound on the number restric-tion enzymes required for unique reconstruction, and show experimental results that are not far from this bound.

Optimal sequencing by hybridization in rounds

Sequencing by hybridization (SBH) is a method for sequencing DNA. The Watson–Crick complementarity of DNA can be used to determine whether the DNA contains an oligonucleotide substring. A large number of oligonucleotides can be arranged on an array (SBH chip). A combinatorial method is used to construct the sequence from the collection of probes that occur in it. We develop an idea of Margaritis and Skiena and propose an algorithm that uses a series of small SBH chips to sequence long strings. The total number of probes used by our method matches the information theoretical lower bound up to a constant factor. Key words: DNA sequencing, sequencing by hybridization, probabilistic analysis. 1