GATC Biotech has agreed to purchase the Pacific Biosciences Pacbio RS platform, a single-molecule, real-time (SMRT) sequencing technology.
The company plans to use the new platform, which is planned for installation in early 2011, for resolving structural variations - for example, in human cancer genomes - and for the detection and confirmation of rare SNPs.
In addition, the future application to enable direct sequencing of methylated bases will make the system attractive for regulatory studies, for example for the pharmaceutical or diagnostics industry.
