HIGH-THROUGHPUT ROBOTIC SYSTEM FOR SEQUENCING OF MICROBIAL GENOMES

A high-throughput robotic workstation system was used for double-stran ded plasmid DNA template preparation and sequencing reaction setup to streamline the sequencing process in genome projects. All 96-well mini prep kits that were tested provided high quality plasmid DNA suitable for fluorescent DNA sequencing. After quantitation in a 96-well UV spe ctrophotometer, the plasmid DNA was used as template to automatically set up sequencing reactions. The setup was controlled by spread sheets that were imported into the robotic system. We utilized this integrat ed system to prepare all necessary shotgun templates for our contribut ions to a number of large-scale genome projects as well as a full-leng th cDNA sequencing project.