Abstract
Knowing the extent and nature of genetically modified (GM) ingredients
in food products has become increasingly important for food
exporters, importers, retailers and consumers. In this thesis a model for detecting unknown genetically modified organisms (GMOs) by utilization of a high-density
synthetic oligonucleotide array (DNA chip) is presented. Biological
and combinatorial reduction rules are applied on a set of probes containing all possible sequences of a uniform length n,
creating probes which should be fitted on a DNA chip for unknown GMO
detection. Reduction rules are defined which eliminate probes that
are poor hybridizers, unlikely to be complementary to the modified sequence or which may give rise to false positive hybridization
signals. A data structure for handling the relatively large
probe sets studied in this thesis is found and suitable algorithms and methods for
performing the various reductions devised. The model is finally tested theoretically on seven
artificially created genetically modified Arabidopsis thaliana
specimens.