title: Error-tolerant pooling designs with inhibitors.
abstract: Pooling designs are used in clone library screening to efficiently distinguish positive clones from negative clones. Mathematically, a pooling design is just a nonadaptive group testing scheme which has been extensively studied in the literature. In some applications, there is a third category of clones called "inhibitors" whose effect is to neutralize positives. Specifically, the presence of an inhibitor in a pool dictates a negative outcome even though positives are present. Sequential group testing schemes, which can be modified to three-stage schemes, have been proposed for the inhibitor model, but it is unknown whether a pooling design (a one-stage scheme) exists. Another open question raised in the literature is whether the inhibitor model can treat unreliable pool outcomes. In this paper, we answer both open problems by giving a pooling design, as well as a two-stage scheme, for the inhibitor model with unreliable outcomes. The number of pools required by our schemes are quite comparable to the three-stage scheme.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Mathematics, National Chiao Tung University, Hsìnchu 300, Taiwan.
authors.forename: F K
authors.initials: FK
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: Y C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004791:Enzyme Inhibitors; D008433:Mathematics; D008962:Models, Theoretical
chemical_list: D004791:Enzyme Inhibitors