Patent ID: 7465578

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a reaction chamber to contain a polymerase and at least one nucleic acid template attached to an immobilization surface for growing a nascent strand complementary in sequence to the respective template; a detection unit comprising an excitation source, the detection unit being adapted for identifying and quantifying nucleotide precursors in the reaction chamber to identify nucleotide precursors incorporated into the nascent strand; a molecule dispenser for dispensing nucleotide precursors into the reaction chamber; and an information processing and control system operably coupled to the detection unit and the molecule dispenser, for controlling nucleotide precursor release rate from the dispenser to regulate the release of nucleotide precursors by the molecule dispenser to approximately match the rate of incorporation of nucleotide precursors into the nascent strand, wherein the molecule dispenser comprises multiple molecule dispensers for dispensing four types of nucleic acid precursors, whereby the rate of release of the four types of nucleotide precursors is independently controlled.