Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bionet!ipsc.afrc.ac.uk!MURPHY
From: MURPHY@IPSC.AFRC.AC.UK
Newsgroups: bionet.general
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <8906251742.AA05285@net.bio.net>
Date: 25 Jun 89 18:39:58 GMT
Sender: daemon@NET.BIO.NET
Lines: 34


    The laboratory within which I work is considering the purchase of what
is loosely called an "Automatic DNA Sequencer". Disregarding the fact that
what these machines do is to detect bands on a gel after most of the hard
work -  like cloning, template generation, screening, sequencing reactions etc
- is done, we are still interested in the experience of other groups in using
such machines. Our basic problems are that the technology is so new that there
is little unbiased information available on the ability of these products to
do their job, and that because of the high capital cost the firms marketing
the equipment are reluctant to loan us one to try it out. My worry is that
this reluctance may be due to the fact that the machines may not be capable of
doing the job. I would therefore be very interested in the direct experience
of people who have used DNA Sequencers, particularly if they have been able to
try out the products of several manufacturers. The kind of things I am
interested in are:

1.  Does it work?
2.  How many templates can be processed in one day?
3.  In comparisons with manual sequencing on the same template, what is:
    (i)  the maximum number of bases that can be read
    (ii) the percentage of wrong assignment of bases
    (iii)the percentage of ambiguous bases that are assigned
4.  How many runs do you perform each week?
5.  Having used the machine, would you go back to manual sequencing?
6.  How does the running cost compare to manual sequencing?
7.  Are you using the equipment for genome mapping or other purposes?
8.  Why do the companies supplying the equipment slag each other off so much?
Is it because the equipment is so bad that they are scrabbling around to
recover their development costs, or what?

    I would be grateful for any replies to these queries DIRECT TO ME AND
NOT TO THE BULLETIN BOARD (who needs Netdirt?) but I would be happy to supply
a summary of the results to other interested parties.
Thanks in advance!