Modification of a commercially available DNA sequencer to increase sample throughput

Rather than wait for the instrument manufacturer to provide 96-lane-per-gel capability, the authors decided to further develop a modification proposed by Clark Tibbetts in 1997, which entailed providing external control of the CCD camera and collecting the data with a data acquisition (Daq) card installed in a separate Windows 95 operated machine. Ideally, this combination could be used to select any desired per-scan pixel density with a corresponding lane density on the gel. In practice, the authors aimed to increase the lane density on model 377 gels to 96, since this number exactly matches the sample batch size the authors currently employ. This article describes the authors' development of such capability, including results that compare their modification to the commercially available upgrade from Perkin-Elmer Biosystems introduced during their development work.