Jeff J. Babon, BSc. Melb Master of Science Tamara Gough, BApp. Rania Horaitis, BSc. Our work centres on mutation, its effect, its type, documentation and its detection. In future, we hope to research its cause.
Individual genes can be faulty in hundreds of different ways, making the faults difficult to find.
Simple and cheap methods for mutation detection are of concern, both to patients and a large group of researchers including ourselves. Around a third of our activities are concerned with the development and improvement of mutation detection methods. In 1988, we described a new method to detect mutations which was patented. This is effective, but has problems, but a major international company is likely to attempt to improve it in the next year in a collaborative program. We described another method in 1995 with Dr. Kemper, Cologne, which is being developed by Avitech Diagnostics and a kit should be released in mid 1997.