Melting Point
About this program
This program is designed to analyse data files from the Idaho Technology Inc LightScanner and identify sequence variants.
While the machine comes with analysis software, the general feeling was that this software was difficult to use and could
produce different results depending on the settings used. Therefore, I was asked to create a program that was easy to use
and had fewer setting that could alter the out come.
Initially, the program was meant to discover novel mutations in patients with a possible disease mutation, but in reality
the general technique is not robust enough to be used in a diagnostic setting. However, it is good at genotyping PCR products that
are known to work, where a small but significant error rate is acceptable.
The main considerations when using this technique are:
- Are there any other SNPs present on the PCR product?
- Are the curves for each genotype different enough to differentiate each genotype?
- Were all the DNA samples extracted using the same method? The technique is sensitive to different salt concentrations.
Since the program/technique is not able to detect novel mutations with a high degree of confidence, work was halted on the program.
However, it as been used to genotype patients and so under gone some further development to aid this task.
This program can be downloaded here and the instructions can be
obtained here some features are not yet in the instructions, so you may
have to play around with it.
Computer requirements
This program runs on Microsoft Windows, using the .NET 2.0 environment which can be obtained from
here.
|