Fluidigm has introduced its reusable FR48.48 Dynamic Array integrated fluidic circuit (IFC), which it claims to be the world's first reusable bio-chip for the SNP genotyping market.
The company said the FR48.48 Dynamic Array IFC is the first in a line of reusable chip products that will lower costs and enable the use of SNP genotyping in a range of applications, including plant and animal biotechnology.
The lower costs and accelerated workflow will provide economic value, allowing researchers to bring the benefits of molecular breeding, quality control and genetic testing to farmers and consumers.
The chip has been designed to give good performance in the three primary areas of importance for SNP genotyping: cost, throughput and data quality.
The reusable chip can decrease the cost per genotype by up to 80 per cent for ultra-high throughput SNP genotyping customers when compared with Fluidigm's single-use 48.48 Dynamic Array IFC and is designed to support an accelerated workflow for higher-sample-throughout applications.
Each chip can be used up to five times and is able to produce results for 48 samples across 48 assays for a total of up to 11,520 genotypes over the five uses.
Fast-loading and thermal cycling allows a single operator to run more than 3X the numbers of samples in a day when compared with using single-use 48.48 Dynamic Array IFCs.
The reusable chip provides 99 per cent or greater call rates, and 99.75 per cent or higher accuracy.
The launch of the reusable FR.48.48 Dynamic Array IFC is accompanied by the introduction of the IFC Controller WX, a device that automatically performs fast loading or cleaning of the reusable IFC.
The reusable FR48.48 chip can be loaded in 30mins and the overall time for loading and thermal cycling is about one hour, compared with approximately three hours for single-use 48.48 Dynamic Array IFCs.
The FR48.48 chip and the IFC Controller WX are part of a complete system designed to meet the needs of high-sample-throughput SNP genotyping.
The product family now includes the reusable FR48.48 Dynamic Array IFC, the IFC Controller WX, the FC1 Cycler and either Fluidigm's EP1 Reader or Biomark system.
