부산대학교 도서관

DNA sequencing techniques may be used to detect a critical change in nucleotides of a gene that may produce a dysfunctional protein associated with a particular disease. DNA sequencing involves isolating and amplifying fairly short segments of chromosomal DNA to determine the sequence of the nucleotides in these fragments. One of the DNA sequencing methods involves an enzymatic reaction using DNA polymerase and certain terminators of the DNA chain, and may be automated quite well. The two DNA strands are separated from each other and DNA polymerase and deoxynucleotide bases are added to produce newly synthesized strands. The newly synthesized DNA strands are analyzed using a special sequencing gel that permits separation of DNA strands differing in length by only one base. Autoradiograph films of the dried gel reveal the sequences complementary to the strand from the template DNA. Automated sequencing may reduce the manual labor, time, and error involved in running the DNA sequencing reactions and gels and reading the sequences. Automation of DNA sequencing is being used to generate the full sequence of the human genome.