Fluidigm to Unveil New Custom Assay Design Service

Fluidigm Corp. announced that it will unveil a new custom assay design service for high-sample throughput amplicon re-sequencing on Illumina platforms at this week’s Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) meeting.

When used with the Fluidigm Access Array System, the Access Array Target (News - Alert)-Specific Primers enable fast and simple preparation of up to 480 amplicons per sample at a time.

Company officials said that this capability is ideal for analysis of large sample sets across focused genomic regions to better understand human genetic variation.

With Access Array Target-Specific Primers, researchers can quickly and specifically amplify their target of interest, incorporate sample-specific barcodes and add sequencer-specific adaptors, all at the same time, said Gajus Worthington, president and CEO at Fluidigm.

Worthington said that with the new Access Array Target-Specific Primers, the company increases the number of amplicons per sample by 10X compared to its traditional solution.

In conjunction with our Access Array Barcode Library for Illumina Sequencers, up to 384 unique samples can be multiplexed per sequencing run, Worthington said. “This will help scientists capture the maximum output of their sequencers and provide the broadest coverage possible for their human genetic variation studies.”

The Fluidigm Access Array System prepares amplicons for re-sequencing and eliminates the need for any additional library preparation. It can operate with any next-generation sequencer (NGS) on the market.

Additionally, Access Array Barcode Libraries, developed for the Illumina, Roche, and Ion Torrent sequencing platforms, enable researchers to test the same amplicon pools to cross-validate sequencing results across different NGS platforms.

Fluidigm develops, manufactures and markets microfluidic systems for growth markets in the life science and agricultural biotechnology, or Ag-Bio, industries.

Recently, the company announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2011. The company said that its product revenue for the fourth quarter of 2011 was $12.3 million, an increase of 28 percent from $9.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2010.