Agilent Technologies and Applied Biosystems have introduced the Agilent Sureselect target-enrichment system, which is optimised for the Solid genomic analysis sequencing platform.
As part of the agreement, the companies are co-marketing the Sureselect system, which is a research tool for efficiently re-sequencing specific regions of interest in the genome.
The tool is said to save researchers time and expense, often enabling them to conduct studies that would otherwise not be feasible.
In advance of the commercialisation, the Sureselect target-enrichment system was made available to a number of research scientists using the Solid system on an early-access basis, including Dr John McPherson, cancer genomics director at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR).
Research scientists at OICR are using seven Solid systems to identify genes critical to the development of cancer.
McPherson said: 'In the course of our cancer research, we will target several genomic regions with the Sureselect solution for sequencing on the Solid platform.
'The combination of the Sureselect enrichment and the accuracy of the Solid system will enable us to cost-effectively assess genetic variation across multiple tumour samples.'
Agilent said its target-enrichment product line offers customer-specified mixtures of up to 55,000 biotinylated RNA probes, delivered in single tubes.
The capture probes are 120 base pairs long, which makes them effective at capturing DNA containing unknown mutations, such as single-nucleotide polymorphisms, insertions or deletions.
Sureselect products are packaged for a range of study sizes, from tens to thousands of samples, and are well-suited for automation in -high-throughput workflows.
Users can design their own custom Sureselect mixtures using the Agilent eArray online design tool, which contains many key genomes and also lets users upload their own sequences.
This web-based design tool is the heart of Agilent's custom genomics product manufacturing capability and is now expanded to the Sureselect platforms.
EArray allows researchers to design the tools they need without up-front design fees.
