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The lengths of fragments covering a fixed marker in randomly cut linear or circular DNA

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2016

Samuel Litwin*
Affiliation:
The Institute for Cancer Research
*
Postal address: The Institute for Cancer Research, 7701 Burholme Avenue, Fox Chase, Philadelphia, PA 19111, U.S.A.

Abstract

A linear DNA molecule may be labelled at a fixed locus by a minute complementary radioactive molecule. A collection of identical molecules is to be so labelled and each one independently cut at a random number, N, of random places, X (N Poisson, X uniform). Fragments containing the label are to be collected and assayed by length. It is shown that the recovery pattern (fragment length distribution) contains a jump discontinuity at the fixed locus and may be used to determine the distance between the attachment site and the nearest end of the molecule.

The recovery pattern under the hypothesis that the collection of molecules are circularly permuted, i.e. the labelled locus is uniformly distributed over the length of the molecule, does not contain such discontinuities. The case where the labelling molecule has a non-negligible extent is also treated.

Type
Research Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Applied Probability Trust 1979 

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Footnotes

This work supported by U.S.P.H.S. grants CA–06927, CA–22780, and RR–05539 from the National Institutes of Health and by an appropriation from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

References

Bithell, J. F. (1969) A stochastic model for the breaking of molecular segments. J. Appl. Prob. 6, 5973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Litwin, S. (1969) The distribution of radioactive recovery in randomly cut and sedimented DNA. J. Appl. Prob. 6, 275284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar