Pattern consistency decoder. (A) Successful decoding. (Red) Specimen #6 is the only mutant in the library (top panel). After pooling and sequencing, the only data available for the decoder are the following pattern: mutant is in the first pool of the first pooling window and in the sixth pool of the second pooling window (middle panel; see corresponding red rows in the matrix). Summing along the columns of the pattern (bottom panel) creates a histogram that represents the number of windows in which a specimen was found. Notice that the scores of the histograms range from 0 to the weight of the matrix. The pattern consistency decoder asserts that only specimens that appeared in all windows will be assigned to the mutant state. Since only specimen #6 has a score of 2 in the histogram meaning it appeared in all possible windows, it is associated with the mutant state, and the decoder reports the correct result. (B) Failure in the decoding. This pooling matrix has decoding robustness of d = 1, and the correct decoding of d0 = 2. Thus, in the example, correct decoding is not guaranteed. Specimens #6 and #8 are mutants (top), and the pattern that the decoder encounters is indicated in the matrix (middle). Consequently, associating specimen #16 with the mutant state is consistent, and it gets a score of 2 in the histogram, and is reported as a mutant.
