Zygem will market Rubicon Genomics' Picoplex single-cell amplification kits in Australia and New Zealand after the companies signed a distribution agreement.
'Rubicon's technology can perform rapid amplification of nucleic acids from a variety of sample types easily and with excellent fidelity,' said James Koziarz, president and chief-executive officer of Rubicon Genomics.
With Picoplex technology, the same amount of genomic data for analysis can be obtained from a single human cell or from 10,000 cells, with minimal background.
In a simple three-step, three-hour process, single cells can be lysed and the DNA amplified one million-fold.
The amplified DNA can be analysed using qPCR, microarrays and next-generation sequencing instruments for either research or diagnostic applications.
Other whole-genome amplification kits based on PCR or multiple displacement amplification inconsistently amplify single cells, with unpredictable locus and allele dropouts.
In contrast, Picoplex delivers amplified total DNA from single cells that reproducibly represents genomic sequences without allele dropouts.
Picoplex has become the leading method for amplifying single cells for pre-implantation genetic diagnostics and screening (PGD/PGS) of human embryos.
It is expected to displace current technologies for amplifying genomic DNA from circulating tumour cells, tumour tissue, stem cells and forensic samples.
This new agreement follows a 2009 agreement to incorporate Zygem's advanced enzymatic nucleic-acid extraction technology into Rubicon's pre-analytical platform products to improve the performance of DNA and RNA analytical instruments.
