OPTICAL MAPPING APPROACHES TO MOLECULAR GENOMICS

A variety of physical mapping methods exist for the analysis of nuclei c acids or genomes, including hybridization, sequence tagged site mapp ing, restriction enzyme fingerprinting, radiation hybrid mapping and o ptical mapping. Single-molecule approaches offer numerous advantages, including very high resolution, small sample size requirements, and pa rallel sample processing. The convergence of recent advances in new si ngle molecule techniques, surface chemistry and machine vision technol ogy has contributed to novel approaches to genome analysis.