Identifying and understanding roles of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) will lead to accurate diagnosis of inherited disease states, determination of risk factors, and characterization of patients' metabolic profiles. Such technology promises to lead to prophylactic treatments to delay the onset or progression of disease, and prescriptions of the safest and most efficacious medications. Current DNA sequencing technology, however, is too slow and expensive for these tasks. Here, we propose to develop an ultrafast DNA sequencing system featuring sequencing-by-synthesis (SBS) on high-density oligonucleotide arrays, each with approximately one million primer features. The collaborative team involved in this project was responsible for some of the earliest published work on SBS, and recognize the fundamental challenge that any method based on this approach must address before tangible progress to a practical system can be made. That is, to identify combinations of appropriately modified nucleoside triphosphates that will be accepted, efficiently and with high fidelity, by suitably mutated DNA replicating enzymes. Consequently, this proposal features a strong synthetic chemistry component featuring two laboratories focused on the preparing nucleoside triphosphates with fluorescent, labile 3'-protecting groups. It also describes molecular biology to produce relatively large libraries of mutated polymerases. Even though the numbers of modified enzymes generated is high, the mutations will focus on key structural regions to maximize the chances of finding suitable systems. This molecular biology component is coupled with a combinatorial screen to rapidly identify suitable enzyme/modified dNTP pairs. Once suitable combinations are identified, then the SBS methodology will be implemented using high-density arrays that, uniquely, orientate oligonucleotides in the desired 5'-> 3' direction. This core technology fits into a broader, comprehensive research plan encompassing microfluidics for sample manipulation and delivery of the DNA to the SBS system, fluorescent imaging via our proprietary Pulse-Multiline Excitation (PME) system, computational methods for identifying an optimal tiling path and thermodynamic properties of oligonucleotides across whole chromosomes, and informatics to process and store the data generated. The overall goal is, by the end of year three, to complete sequencing of chromosomes 3, 12 & X, which cover approximately 0.5 gigabases and would lay the foundation for whole genome sequencing.
