Estimating the probability that a genomic library contains a specific DNA sequence

• Published in: Journal of agricultural, biological, and environmental statistics Vol. 4; no. 1; pp. 1 - 8
• Main Authors: Gardner, C.O., Jr, Eskridge, K.M, Zhang, H.T, Weeks, D.P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Statistical Association and the International Biometric Society 01-03-1999; American Statistical Association; International Biometric Society
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Carbon; Chlamydomonas reinhardtii; DNA; Estimate reliability; Estimation bias; Estimation methods; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Genes. Genome; Genomes; Genomic libraries; Libraries; Molecular and cellular biology; Molecular genetics; Nucleotide sequences; probability analysis; Statistical variance; Nucleotide sequence; Databank; Algae; Gene library; Chlorophyceae; Chlorophyta; Chlamydomonas reinhardtii; DNA; Binomial distribution; Molecular cloning; Reliability; Genome; Thallophyta
• ISSN: 1085-7117; 1537-2693
• DOI: 10.2307/1400418

A genomic library generally contains a random collection of DNA fragments from one organism individually cloned into cells of a host organism using plasmid or viral vectors. For a genomic library to be reliable, it is crucial that the library have a high probability of containing a complete copy of any particular gene being studied. In this article, we compare several different methods of estimating this probability based on data from a genomic library of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii DNA. Results suggest that a method based on estimated insert size will generally be preferred because of its precision and cost effectiveness relative to other methods.