Modeling of two-dimensional DNA display

Abstract

2D display is a fast and economical way of visualizing polymorphism and comparing genomes, which is based on the separation of DNA fragments in two steps, according first to their size and then to their sequence composition. In this paper, we present an exhaustive study of the numerical issues associated with a model aimed at predicting the final absolute locations of DNA fragments in 2D display experiments. We show that simple expressions for the mobility of DNA fragments in both dimensions allow one to reproduce experimental final absolute locations to better than experimental uncertainties. On the other hand, our simulations also point out that the results of 2D display experiments are not sufficient to determine the best set of parameters for the modeling of fragments separation in the second dimension and that additional detailed measurements of the mobility of a few sequences are necessary to achieve this goal. We hope that this work will help in establishing simulations as a powerful tool to optimize experimental conditions without having to perform a large number of preliminary experiments and to estimate whether 2D DNA display is suited to identify a mutation or a genetic difference that is expected to exist between the genomes of closely related organisms.Comment: accepted in Electrophoresi