The identification of positive clones in a general inhibitor model

In using pooling designs to identify clones containing a specific subsequence called positive clones, sometimes there exist nonpositive clones which can cancel the effect of positive clones. Various models have been studied which differ in the power of cancellation. Although the various models pose interesting mathematical problems, and ingenious constructions of pooling designs have been proposed, in practice we rarely are sure about the true model and thus about which pooling design to use. In this paper we give a pooling design which fits all inhibitor models, and does not use more tests than in the more specific models. In particular, we obtain a 1-round pooling design for the k-inhibitor model for which only sequential designs are currently known.