The basic design of a single molecule DNA sequencing apparatus would involve a detector, capable of sensing the identity of bases (or, a label attached to that base) that pass it, a motor to move the DNA past the detector and a mechanism for attaching the motor to the DNA.  Perhaps, at this time, the easiest system for the detector is based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), which detect photons from two closely located (<10nm) fluorophores (Ha et al., 1996).  The DNA to be sequenced can be labelled with fluorophore-tagged bases, using standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) techniques and suitable labelled nucleotides.  These techniques, also, allow the degree of incorporation of fluorophore to be controlled.   The key, to a useful outcome to this work, is likely to be the identification of specific mutations within the DNA sequence (SNPs).