Screening for mutations prior to sequencing can reduce the time and costs of identifying mutations. When the DNA sequence is known, the technique of detecting mutations as single-stranded conformational polymorphisms (SSCP) is a convenient method of screening for possible mutations. SSCP was originally developed by Orita et al. (1 ). It has the ability of detecting a single base change, and has been applied to a number of genes, including the insulin receptor (2 ), GLUT 4 (3 ), glucokinase (4 ), and the mitochondrial genome (5 ).
