Roche Nimblegen and Biogemma will apply Roche Nimblegen's array-based Sequence Capture complexity reduction technology to provide targeted re-sequencing of crop plant genomes.
This was the result of a research agreement signed by the two companies.
The goal of this partnership is to develop new technologies that enable large-scale genomic marker discovery in plants, which will facilitate marker-assisted breeding programmes to select the crops with traits that will benefit humans.
The collaboration will target highly polyploidy plant genomes including wheat and rapeseed (canola).
These large polyploid genomes (16Gbp for hexaploid wheat, 1.2Gb for canola), necessitate complexity reduction for single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) discovery to target or capture the unique DNA sequences associated with genes of high utility to crop breeders from the majority of insignificant, repetitive DNA sequences present in the genome.
Biogemma plans to power its proprietary sequences with Nimblegen technology to accelerate discoveries for the molecular breeding programmes of its shareholders.
This co-development leverages recent optimisations of Roche Nimblegen's core Sequence Capture technology for the Genome Sequencer FLX Titanium series sequencing platform from 454 Life Sciences.
