PNNL

Abstract

Detecting subtle genetic differences between microorganisms is an important problem in molecular epidemiology and microbial forensics. In a typical investigation, gel electrophoresis is used to compare randomly amplified DNA fragments between microbial strains, where the patterns of DNA fragment sizes are proxies for a microbe’s genotype. The limited genomic sample captured on a gel is often insufficient to discriminate nearly identical strains. This paper examines the application of microarray technology to DNA fingerprinting as a high-resolution alternative to gel-based methods. The so-called universal microarray, which uses short oligonucleotide probes that do not target specific genes or species, is intended to be applicable to all microorganisms because it does not require prior knowledge of genomic sequence. In principle, closely related strains can be distinguished if the number of probes on the microarray is sufficiently large, i.e., if the genome is sufficiently sampled. In practice, we confront noisy data, imperfectly matched hybridizations, and a high-dimensional inference problem. We describe the statistical problems of microarray fingerprinting, outline similarities with and differences from more conventional microarray applications, and illustrate the statistical fingerprinting problem for 10 closely related strains from three Bacillus species, and 3 strains from non-Bacillus species.