Using transforming matrices to generate DNA clone grids

Abstract

Ina yeast artificial chromosome library, DNA clones may be stored in n-dimensional grids. Barillot, Lacroix and Cohen proposed to use the grid lines as pools in a pooling design (used in physical mapping). To screen the clones in a given grid, they noted that it is important to take several copies of the grid, but rearrange the clones such that two clones are in the same grid line at most once. For ease of implementation, biologists proposed using transforming matrices to transform one copy into another. We give a construction of a set of transforming matrices which produce a maximum number of such copies whenever q is a prime power. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.