Extraction of Human DNA Replication Timing Patterns from Discrete Microarray Data

Abstract. Effective reproduction is essential for the survival and pro-liferation of any organism, from the birth of new offspring to the repro-duction of individual cells. Each portion of a cell’s DNA must be copied exactly once during the replication phase of its cell cycle to ensure vi-ability. In humans, this is achieved by a complex pattern of replication origins and terminations along the chromosomes until the final product is realized. DNA Tiling Microarrays are utilized to assay discrete pools of DNA replicated during different parts of the replication phase. We present a generalized framework for analyzing this discrete timing data to recover a relatively continuous profile of the DNA replication tim-ing. This approach can be used to assay DNA replication timing over a variety of human cell lines or extended to other organisms. Key words: human replication timing, DNA tiling microarrays 1 Introduction and Related Work DNA replication is a crucial step in the life cycle of a cell as faithful repro