Describe ChromoTrace
Recent advances of super-resolution microscopy in principle enable the mapping of specific molecular features with nanometer precision inside cells. Combined with highly specific, sensitive and multiplexed fluorescence labeling of DNA sequences this opens up the possibility of mapping the 3D path of the genome sequence in situ. ChromoTrace is a computational methodology to reconstruct the sequence configuration of all human chromosomes in the nucleus from a super-resolution image of a set of fluorescent in situ probes hybridized to the genome in a cell. ChromoTrace uses suffix trees to assign a known linear ordering of in situ probes on the genome to an unknown set of 3D in-situ probe positions in the nucleus from super-resolved images using the known genomic probe spacing as a set of physical distance constraints between probes. The algorithm can assign the 3D positions of the majority of loci with high accuracy and reasonable sensitivity to specific genome sequences.