Fluidigm has announced that the Toulouse Midi-Pyrenees Genomic Platform - Gentoul INRA core facility is providing a range of services on a Biomark system for genetic analysis to French researchers.
These services include SNP genotyping, gene expression analysis and digital PCR quantification of DNA libraries for next-generation sequencing.
The INRA has been validating the performance of the system on several projects over the past year.
Denis Milan, group leader of the Department of Animal Genetics at INRA, said: 'We have used the Biomark system for many different applications and have found the results to be very robust and comparable to those obtained using classical techniques.
'However, this platform allows us to provide researchers with more high-quality data in a fraction of the time and at an affordable cost,' Milan added.
The INRA Genomic Platform core facility offers researchers access to advanced life-science tools through the organisation's service centre, which is also open to scientists from other institutes.
Many species, such as human, pig, mouse, rat, chicken, macaque and more have been studied at the facility.
Fluidigm's Biomark system has already been used in large-scale projects such as the European Commission Program Diogenes (Diet, Obesity and Genes).
Biomark is a versatile, high-throughput, high-performance genetic analysis platform.
It enables a variety of applications, including disease tissue profiling, single-cell gene expression, ultra-high throughput genotyping, and absolute quantitation via digital PCR.
The system is equipped with features that enhance throughput, reduce costs by using microscopic amounts of expensive reagents, and lessen hands-on time by having the chip automate the liquid-handling steps.
Fluidigm's 96.96 Dynamic Array IFCs can provide researchers with 9,216 real-time data point reads, or 24 times the number of reads provided by a transitional single 384-well plate, in the same amount of time.
INRA carries out mission-oriented research for high-quality and healthy foods, competitive and sustainable agriculture and nutrition, the environment and land use facing the world of agriculture and agronomics today.
Challenges such as climate change, human nutrition, competition between food and non-food crops, the exhaustion of fossil resources and appropriate land management put agronomists in a position to generate compatible economic, social and environmental development.
