Do you have to sequence both strands?

[Michael Holland]

In message Sat, 2 Apr 1994 19:37:46,
  zxiong at arizvm1.ccit.arizona.edu (Zhongguo Xiong)  writes:

> 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.

I am basically in agreement with this point of view but I guess John's reply
is do you need ALL of both strands?? here I get a little shaky and say a
qualified no. What does the rest of the networld think??
Michael K Holland PhD
CSIRO, Wildlife & Ecology
PO Box 84, Lyneham ACT 2602, Australia
Fax: 61-6-242-9242  Phone:61-6-242-1793
mholland at dwe.csiro.au