Two types of instrument are emerging for the automated measurement of dna. One uses fluorescent labeling and detection in the gel. The other uses radioactive labeling and detection from an autoradiogram. Innovations such as multiplex sequencing suggest that both techniques will be used in years to come for both mapping and sequencing. Instrumentation for the two approaches has been sophisticated and expensive (typically $90,000 per instrument). As a result, fewer than one percent of the 10,000 plus sequencing laboratories worldwide have acquired such instrumentation. Because of high cost, adoption of automated DNA sequencing instrumentation will be slow even though interest is high. This threatens to restrict major sequencing efforts to a few "big science" laboratories, hindering the advancement of the field. The goal of this work is to demonstrate the technological feasibility of scanning instrumentation for automated sequence reading with a cost an order of magnitude lower, and hence more accessible to smaller laboratories. This work includes construction of a test fixture and measurements made with it. If successful, these measurements will demonstrate the feasibility of a low cost approach.
