Lane tracking on the 377 with the XL upgrade
Miller, Mark J. (millerm@dc37a.nci.nih.gov)
Thu, 25 Jun 1998 13:44:13 -0400
As many of us have discovered, the new, improved automatic lane tracker software
on the 377XL (Sequence Analysis Version 3.0) is often a disaster. I can't
remember the last time I accepted its findings without significant editing. One
frequent problem is that if you have several lanes missing - either because the
sequencing reaction failed, or gave a very weak signal - the auto-tracker will
fail completely. I've recently found that the following trick helps:
Before auto-tracking, visually determine which lanes are missing, then de-select
those lanes on the gel image (CMD-click on the upper diamond- color turns gray
and line disappears).
Run Autotracking.
If the tracking works, and is more or less satisfactory, re-select those lanes
you inactivated. Usually it's done a pretty good job of tracking in those lanes.
Usually you can't get any usable base calling in the de-selected lanes, but some
users still seem to want those chromatogram files.
Mark Miller