Frequently Asked Questions
Most orders are processed within 48 hours of receipt at our lab. We will confirm the receipt of your order. If you have not received your sequences 72 hours after we receive your order, please contact us.
The DNA Sequencing Facility sends invoices once a month for the previous month’s sequencing. If your institution requires a purchase order number (or some other identifying number on the invoice), please be sure to include that on your completed order form.
Sequences are delivered as industry-standard text files and data files. There are several software packages available for viewing sequences; here are just a few:
- 4Peaks (Mac)
- Shows razor-sharp traces, auto-translates sequences, reads the most common sequence file formats, and displays sequence quality data.
- BioEdit (Windows)
- Biological sequence alignment editor.
- Chromas (Windows)
- View ABI-formatted automated sequencing files.
- Finch TV (Mac, Windows, Linux, and Solaris)
- Geospiza’s FinchTV is a popular way to view DNA sequence traces.
- Applied Biosystems
- Applied Biosystems offers a range of free tools to facilitate your experimental design, data analysis, and data management. Click here for a list of these tools.
There are a wide variety of sequencing databases available and many ways to search within and across sequencing databases. Here are a few resources we find useful:
- GenBank
- The NIH genetic sequence database.
- Entrez
- An integrated search and retrieval system that takes information from all of the databases at NCBI.
- BLAST
- A set of similarity search programs designed to explore all of the available sequence databases regardless of whether the query is protein or DNA.
If you still have questions, please contact us.