We use Verity Software House's ModFit for our DNA analysis. It has several
features to help automate analysis, although in practice you would want to do
a semi-automated analysis.
After reading a file, you can select 'Auto Analyze', at which point the
program will do its best to guess just what the heck your sample MIGHT be.
We generally do not use this feature.
If you know where your sample came from, you can have ModFit help you select
a model for fitting, just by checking whether the sample was fresh or frozen,
diploid or aneuploid, etc. This usually works well as a starting point for
analysis. If you routinely run the same kind of samples, and you have a
model worked out for it, you can automate the analysis by using ModFit macros,
or by using Windows Recorder. Fitting takes less than 5 seconds per sample
(on a 486/25), with the biggest holdup being printing (no fault of ModFit's;
printers are just plain slow!). So I guess it would take 30 seconds to a
minute per sample if you were using a print manager/spooler/server, and were
to blindly automate analysis (of course, it would be prudent to check and
make sure that the model is appropriate for each sample).
Eric Van Buren vanburen%flovax.dnet@rocdec.roc.wayne.edu
Immunology & Microbiology 313 577 1009 voice
Wayne State University 313 577 1155 fax