Related papers: What can be observed in real time PCR and when doe…
A common approach to quantifying DNA involves repeated cycles of DNA amplification. This approach, employed by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), produces outputs that are corrupted by amplification noise, making it challenging to…
We develop statistically based methods to detect single nucleotide DNA mutations in next generation sequencing data. Sequencing generates counts of the number of times each base was observed at hundreds of thousands to billions of genome…
Real-time PCR, or Real-time Quantitative PCR (qPCR) is an effective approach to quantify nucleic acid samples. Given the complicated reaction system along with thermal cycles, there has been long-term confusion on accurately calculating the…
Mutations can arise from the chance misincorporation of nucleotides during DNA replication or from DNA lesions that are not repaired correctly. We introduce a model that relates the source of mutations to their accumulation with cell…
Rapid sequencing of individual human genome is prerequisite to genomic medicine, where diseases will be prevented by preemptive cures. Quantum-mechanical tunneling through single-stranded DNA in a solid-state nanopore has been proposed for…
The variation in DNA copy number carries information on the modalities of genome evolution and misregulation of DNA replication in cancer cells; its study can be helpful to localize tumor suppressor genes, distinguish different populations…
Biological cells replicate their genomes in a well-planned manner. The DNA replication program of an organism determines the timing at which different genomic regions are replicated, with fundamental consequences for cell homeostasis and…
Neuroblastoma is one of the most common cancers in infants, and the initial diagnosis of this disease is difficult. At present, the MYCN gene amplification (MNA) status is detected by invasive pathological examination of tumor samples. This…
Stochastic models of sequential mutation acquisition are widely used to quantify cancer and bacterial evolution. Across manifold scenarios, recurrent research questions are: how many cells are there with $n$ alterations, and how long will…
As cancer advances, cells often spread from the primary tumor to other parts of the body and form metastases. This is the main cause of cancer related mortality. Here we investigate a conceptually simple model of metastasis formation where…
We study large deviation events in the timing of disease recurrence. In particular, we are interested in modeling cancer treatment failure due to mutation-induced drug resistance. We first present a two-type branching process model of this…
The expression levels of many thousands of genes can be measured simultaneously by DNA microarrays (chips). This novel experimental tool has revolutionized research in molecular biology and generated considerable excitement. A typical…
When presenting forensic evidence, such as a DNA match, experts often use the Likelihood ratio (LR) to explain the impact of evidence . The LR measures the probative value of the evidence with respect to a single hypothesis such as 'DNA…
Given a set of aligned sequences of independent noisy observations, we are concerned with detecting intervals where the mean values of the observations change simultaneously in a subset of the sequences. The intervals of changed means are…
We study a simple model of DNA evolution in a growing population of cells. Each cell contains a nucleotide sequence which randomly mutates at cell division. Cells divide according to a branching process. Following typical parameter values…
Biological tools such as genetic lineage tracing, three dimensional confocal microscopy and next generation DNA sequencing are providing new ways to quantify the distribution of clones of normal and mutated cells. Population-wide clone size…
When an infectious disease strikes a population, the number of newly reported cases is often the only available information that one can obtain during early stages of the outbreak. An important goal of early outbreak analysis is to obtain a…
Despite initial success, cancer therapies often fail due to the emergence of drug-resistant cells. In this study, we use a mathematical model to investigate how cancer evolves over time, specifically focusing on the state of the tumor when…
The DNA storage channel is considered, in which a codeword is comprised of $M$ unordered DNA molecules. At reading time, $N$ molecules are sampled with replacement, and then each molecule is sequenced. A coded-index concatenated-coding…
The emergence of a predominant phenotype within a cell population is often triggered by a rare accumulation of DNA mutations in a single cell. For example, tumors may be initiated by a single cell in which multiple mutations cooperate to…