28. Technology Development for the Human Genome Project 

Chris Robinson¹, Todd Brooks¹, Travis Crane¹, Chris Elkin² and Trevor L. Hawkins^1,2 
1College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida and ²CuraGen Corporation, Gainesville, Florida 
thawkins@fl.curagen.com 

We are continuing our work on integrated robotic systems and technology development to aid the genome program. The integrated robotic approaches follow on from our development of the Sequatron robotic systems some years ago. Now, we are focusing on reducing volumes of the amplification and sequencing reactions as well as using higher density plates to perform these reactions. This all requires the development of new or modified hardware, such as thermal cyclers, which once developed will be modules for a new fully integrated system. 

We are also working on improvements to the existing bottlenecks in high throughput DNA sequencing. One has been the development of a very low cost adaptation to the ABI 377 system that allows 96 lane gels to be run with the same results as found with the commercially available upgrade. Another, is the automated loading and pre running of ABI 377 gels for use in a high throughput facility. 

Lastly, we are exploring the use of MALDI Mass spectrometry as a tool for the analysis of DNA extension products, specifically the resolution of compressions and error detection in genomic sequencing projects.