Life Technologies Corporation and Douglas Scientific LLC announced they have signed a collaboration and co-marketing agreement to optimize technologies from both companies and provide seamless solutions designed for high-throughput genotyping applications. This collaboration will leverage Life’s industry-leading TaqMan Assays and Douglas’s disruptive Array Tape Platform.
The growing demand for genetic marker screening has led to a greater need for high-throughput genotyping technology that can provide answers for researchers faster and more accurately with affordable, scalable solutions. While other systems enable genotyping of hundreds of samples, combining the TaqMan SNP Genotyping Assays and Array Tape Platform allows customers to easily generate hundreds of thousands of data points per day.
“Taqman is one of the most widely used assays for SNP genotyping. Optimizing the Array Tape Platform for this chemistry was a natural fit for our markets and applications,” says Dan Malmstrom, President and COO at Douglas Scientific. “With preset protocols and optimized instrumentation our customers will realize their throughput and economic goals while experiencing improvements in efficiency and data quality.”
The level of throughput and accuracy reached by combining these technologies is of particular benefit to the plant agricultural biotechnology and animal breeding industries for marker-assisted selection experiments. Genetic selection methods are now essential to enable these industries to keep pace with the food demands of the growing global population. Other animal, human and drug discovery research applications that require industrial-scale genotyping will also benefit from this powerful combination.
“The high throughput capacity of the Array Tape system is highly complementary to our real- time PCR portfolio, and in particular, our TaqMan Assays,” said Chris Linthwaite, Head of Genetic Analysis at Life Technologies. “Customers around the world can now leverage a complete solution for high-throughput genotyping – from sample prep to TaqMan Assays and the Array Tape system, which together offer the industry’s highest quality solution at the affordable cost and high throughput they need.”
Array Tape is a continuous polypropylene strip, serially embossed with reaction wells in customized volumes and formats. With miniaturized reaction wells, this thin (0.3 mm) and flexible solution allows 200 microplate equivalents (76,800 reaction wells) to be spooled onto a single, compact reel. It’s an automated, adaptable microplate replacement for high-throughput screening. Douglas Scientific provides inline, modular instrumentation that is fully integrated and optimized for use with Array Tape including: Nexar liquid handling and assay processing system, Soellex thermal cycler, Araya fluorescent detection instrumentation and software solutions. The platform enables a continuous reel-to-reel process flow to maximize throughput and reduce costs.
Life Technologies offers Custom TaqMan SNP Genotyping Assays for any species of interest. The TaqMan portfolio also includes 4.5 million pre-designed TaqMan SNP Genotyping Assays ideally suited for biomarker screening applications and confirmatory studies following next-generation sequencing experiments. They are designed to accurately detect and quantify genetic variations in DNA samples associated with particular phenotypes of interest. The TaqMan portfolio also includes market-leading TaqMan Master Mix reagents and sample preparation kits such as the TaqMan Sample-to-SNP kit. They are part of a comprehensive portfolio of products and technologies to empower human, plant and animal sciences research.
Date: July 13, 2012
Source: Life Technologies Corporation and Douglas Scientific LLC
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
