Illumina has brought out the Humanomniexpress Beadchip (Omniexpress), the newest addition to the Omni range of microarrays for genome-wide association studies (GWAS).
Designed as a 12-sample Beadchip, Omniexpress allows interrogation of more than 700,000 variants per sample, totalling more than eight million available data points on a single chip.
Coupled with the Illumina Iscan System, Omniexpress enables processing of more than 1,400 samples per week, which Illumina claims is the highest throughput in the industry.
The markers on Omniexpress are a subset of the content powering Illumina's flagship GWAS product, the Humanomni1-Quad, and incorporate an optimised set of SNPs chosen from all three phases of the International Hapmap Project.
As with the Humanomni1, researchers starting with Omniexpress can take advantage of future supplemental Omni Beadchips containing new content derived from the 1000 Genomes Project.
Omniexpress and the recently announced BovineHD Beadchip are the first two products to incorporate Illumina's third-generation array technology, delivering even more content, formats and flexibility to researchers.
The combination of a multi-sample format, proven assay and intelligently selected content of Omniexpress offers several key benefits.
For example, more than 700,000 strategically selected TagSNPs provide genomic coverage, up to 90 per cent for Caucasian and Asian populations as assessed by the International Hapmap Project.
The industry-standard Infinium HD Assay affords greater than 99 per cent average call rates and greater than 99.9 per cent reproducibility.
The Iscan System allows researchers to process in excess of thousands of samples per week.
As with all other Infinium HD products, the Omniexpress Beadchip supports copy-number variation (CNV) analyses for disease-association studies and is compatible with Illumina's automation solutions.
First customer shipments of the Omniexpress are expected in the first quarter of 2010.
