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Prospects for large-scale association studies rely on economical methods and powerful analysis. Representing available SNPs by small subsets and measuring allele frequencies on pooled DNA samples each improve genotyping cost effectiveness, while haplotype analysis may highlight associations in otherwise underpowered studies. This manuscript provides the mathematical framework to integrate these methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universal arrays contain all possible oligonucleotides of a certain length, typically 6-10 bases. They can determine in a single experiment all substrings of that length that occur along a target sequence. That information, also called the spectrum of the sequence, is not sufficient to uniquely reconstruct a sequence longer than a few hundred bases. We have devised a polynomial algorithm that reconstructs the sequence, given the spectrum and an additional reference sequence, homologous to the target sequence. Such a reference is available, for example, in the identification of single-nucleotide polymorphisms. The algorithm can handle errors in the spectrum as well as substitutions, insertions, and deletions in the target sequence. We present extensive simulation results, which show that the algorithm correctly reconstructs target sequences of >2,000 nucleotides from error-prone 8-mer spectra when realistic levels of single-nucleotide polymorphisms are present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Whole-genome sequencing represents a promising approach to pinpoint chemically induced mutations in genetic model organisms, thereby short-cutting time-consuming genetic mapping efforts. Principal Findings: We compare here the ability of two leading high-throughput platforms for paired-end deep sequencing, SOLiD (ABI) and Genome Analyzer (Illumina; ''Solexa''), to achieve the goal of mutant detection. As a test case we used a mutant C. elegans strain that harbors a mutation in the lsy-12 locus which we compare to the reference wild-type genome sequence. We analyzed the accuracy, sensitivity, and depth-coverage characteristics of the two platforms. Both platforms were able to identify the mutation that causes the phenotype of the mutant C. elegans strain, lsy-12. Based on a 4 MB genomic region in which individual variants were validated by Sanger sequencing, we observe tradeoffs between rates of false positives and false negatives when using both platforms under similar coverage and mapping criteria. Significance: In conclusion, whole-genome sequencing conducted by either platform is a viable approach for the identification of single-nucleotide variations in the C. elegans genome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]