Group testing and DNA Microarrays

Invited Talk presented on May 28, 2012 by Alexander Schliep at Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.

Abstract: Group testing has made many contributions to modern molecular biology. In the Human Genome Project large clone libraries where created to amplify DNA. Widely used group testing schemes vastly accelerated the detection of overlaps between the individual clones in these libraries through experiments, realizing savings both in effort and materials. Modern molecular biology also contributed to group testing. The problem of generalized group testing (in the combinatorial sense) arises naturally, when one uses oligonucleotide probes to identify biological agents present in a sample. In this setting a group testing design cannot be chosen arbitrarily. The possible columns of a group testing design matrix are prescribed by the biology, namely by the hybridization reactions between target DNA and probes.