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Biomedical subjects

Michael E Zwick

Publications and source records attributed to Michael E Zwick.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

Microarray-based resequencing of multiple Bacillus anthracis isolates.

We used custom-designed resequencing arrays to generate 3.1 Mb of genomic sequence from a panel of 56 Bacillus anthracis strains. Sequence quality was shown to be very high by replication (discrepancy rate of 7.4 x 10(-7)) and by comparison to independently generated shotgun sequence (discrepancy rate < 2.5 x 10(-6)). Population genomics studies of microbial pathogens using rapid resequencing technologies such as resequencing arrays are critical for recognizing newly emerging or genetically engineered strains.

Bacillus anthracis↗

Discrepancies in dbSNP confirmation rates and allele frequency distributions from varying genotyping error rates and patterns.

SUMMARY: Three recent publications have examined the quality and completeness of public database single nucleotide polymorphism (dbSNP) and have come to dramatically different conclusions regarding dbSNPs false positive rate and the proportion of dbSNPs that are expected to be common. These studies employed different genotyping technologies and different protocols in determining minimum acceptable genotyping quality thresholds. Because heterozygous sites typically have lower quality scores than homozygous sites, a higher minimum quality threshold reduces the number of false positive SNPs, but yields fewer heterozygotes and leads to fewer confirmed SNPs. To account for the different confirmation rates and distributions of minor allele frequencies, we propose that the three confirmation studies have different false positive and false negative rates. We developed a mathematical model to predict SNP confirmation rates and the apparent distribution of minor allele frequencies under user-specified false positive and false negative rates. We applied this model to the three published studies and to our own resequencing effort. We conclude that the dbSNP false positive rate is approximately 15-17% and that the reported confirmation studies have vastly different genotyping error rates and patterns.

Algorithms↗

Haplotype inference in random population samples.

Contemporary genotyping and sequencing methods do not provide information on linkage phase in diploid organisms. The application of statistical methods to infer and reconstruct linkage phase in samples of diploid sequences is a potentially time- and labor-saving method. The Stephens-Smith-Donnelly (SSD) algorithm is one such method, which incorporates concepts from population genetics theory in a Markov chain-Monte Carlo technique. We applied a modified SSD method, as well as the expectation-maximization and partition-ligation algorithms, to sequence data from eight loci spanning >1 Mb on the human X chromosome. We demonstrate that the accuracy of the modified SSD method is better than that of the other algorithms and is superior in terms of the number of sites that may be processed. Also, we find phase reconstructions by the modified SSD method to be highly accurate over regions with high linkage disequilibrium (LD). If only polymorphisms with a minor allele frequency >0.2 are analyzed and scored according to the fraction of neighbor relations correctly called, reconstructions are 95.2% accurate over entire 100-kb stretches and are 98.6% accurate within blocks of high LD.

Algorithms↗