Do you have to sequence both strands?

[Zhongguo Xiong]

In article <gosink-020494174955 at microb3.biostat.washington.edu> gosink at u.washington.edu (John Gosink) writes:
>Hi,
>                                                I was having a discussion with a
>person down the hall.  They claim
>that there is _no_ regulation that says you have to sequence both strands
>of a length of DNA (they are working with cloned PCR products) for
>submission to Genbank and/or a referreed paper.  Do you have any references
>on this subject?

>                                                      -John

>P.S.  They read a single strand, but make it a point to read each gel on
>two different occasions and/or by two different people.

Any sequence that was determined only from one strand is grabage, purely 
grabage. Anyone who has worked on sequencing projects would agree. We are 
doing a lot of sequencing in the lab and find regions of compression that can 
not be resolved with known techniques on one strand and are resolved 
beautifully from the other strand. 

Many sequence compressions are hardly noticeable from the sequencing gels. The 
only sign of the compression is the a slightly wider distance between bases. 
Sequencing on the other strand clearly shows more than one nucleotides are 
compressed in those unsuspicious regions.

Reading by more than one person or sequencing twice through the same region 
may reduce reading error, but not errors associated with compression.