The World Journal carried a news (May 15) on a law suit by W.J. Research against Applera Corp. with reference to automated DNA sequencer developed by Dr. Dr. Henry V. Huang, Associate Professor of Molecular Microbiology, Washington University, School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri. Dr. Huang explained his invention in response to chaimonline inquiry as follows:
I put together the key concepts underlying the automated DNA sequencer while a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Lee Hood's group at Caltech, over a period from 1979 to 1982. I had been doing manual sequencing, that in those days involved considerable effort, large amounts of radioactive (P-32) materials, and the autoradiographic data itself required a certain amount of subjective judgement to decipher. I thought that there has to be a better way to do it. I rather quickly decided that the sequencer should use optical detection, that most mature of physical analysis methods, and that the data should be analyzed (automatically) by computer, using an explicit, evolvable base-calling algorithm. The DNA itself absorbs UV, but the small amounts involved made it quite challenging. While a team of engineers was setting up a prototype, initially to use UV detection, I did some investigation into coupling dyes to the DNA, with the aim of improving the sensitivity, either with straight absorptive or fluorescent detection. It was during this process that I realized that each of the bases can be tagged with a different dye, that then allow all 4 sequencing reactions to be run in the same lane or tube. This rendered moot the problem of aligning the 4 samples had they been run in adjacent lanes, a problem that we had worried about, and was planning on implementing various fixes. It is gratifying that after Lloyd Smith worked out the chemistry of dye coupling, the sequencer did work as conceived. It has proved to be an important tool in biology, e.g., in sequencing the genome of many organisms, including human, mouse, fruitfully, and rice.