In this proposal we request funding for a Perkin-Elmer / Applied Biosystems Automated Sequencer model 373A-01 . This machine will be used primarily by a group of four labs and will be also open to other users in the Department of Plant Biology and the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. Prior experience with a loaned machine demonstrates that we will make efficient use of it. Space, support staff, and collective resources are available for permanent housing and maintenance of the machine. There is currently no core sequencing facility on the Berkeley campus. This machine would double the number of permanent machines on campus and would be the only one available to members of either department . Access to borrowed automated sequencer has accelerated the rate at which we conduct our current NSF sponsored work and has also facilitated innovations of new approaches or expansions of prior expectations in the fields of microbial ecology, population genetics, plant development, and plant disease resistance. It is clear that automated sequencing will soon be the method of choice for labs such as ours in which sequence acquisition is a rate limiting step, and as such it is also the method that graduate students and postdoctoral associates should learn.
