Charting the human genome: a design role for the life-science laboratory instrument engineer

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The sophisticated manual techniques developed to access genetic information encoded in the human genome have yielded a disappointingly small fraction of the knowledge potentially available and automatic methods are now being developed by instrument engineers in an attempt to accelerate the process of biotechnology data capture. The author describes the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and its function as a genetic database. Methods of charting the human genome are outlined and a more detailed account of the Sanger DNA sequencing method is provided. The automation of aspects of material manipulation and separation science relevant to recombinant DNA technology are described. A variety of novel techniques to image labelled DNA fragments separated on electrophoresis gels are detailed together with an outline of automatic methods under development to abstract and process genetic information from the gel band patterns.