Roche NimbleGen's sequence capture technology is available for use in research laboratories enabling researchers to perform targeted sequencing from any region in the genome at any time.
Initially offered as a service, the sequence capture technology is now available for use in research laboratories.
Roche NimbleGen delivers the custom-designed sequence capture arrays to the researcher, together with the essential equipment, reagents, and consumables.
On-site customer workshops are also available for researchers to gain valuable hands-on experience under the guidance of certified sequence capture trainers.
Researchers then perform their own capture experiment following the instructions of a user guide and can perform quick sequencing of enriched regions using technology such as the 454 Genome Sequencer FLX.
The entire workflow, from starting genomic DNA to enriched DNA of target regions and sequencing results, takes about two weeks.
This selective enrichment of target DNA uses high-density oligonucleotide microarrays, consisting of 385,000 probes.
Up to 5Mb of contiguous or noncontiguous genomic sequence can be captured on a single array.
Currently, NimbleGen sequence capture arrays and service are the only commercially available technology for researchers to perform large-scale targeted sequencing with quick turnaround time.
Besides sequence capture delivery arrays, Roche also provides validated equipment and kits, including a new instrument called Elution Station, to facilitate researchers to achieve consistent and reproducible capture results.
The arrays are a perfect fit for the long reads of the 454 sequencing technology and thus enable haplotyping and identification of variations such as insertions, deletions, and SNPs down to single base pairs.
Currently, captured DNA fragments can be directly utilised in the 454 system library preparation process as input for sequencing.
Roche NimbleGen is currently developing protocols that will allow the direct addition of 454 adapters into the sequence capture workflow.
