Fluidigm and 454 Life Sciences, a Roche company, have entered a co-promotional agreement for the companies' complementary amplicon sample preparation and high-throughput sequencing platforms.
Fluidigm's Access Array system enables automated processing of 48 unique samples against 48 unique amplicons, resulting in PCR products that are ready for emPCR amplification and sequencing with 454 Life Sciences' GS Junior or GS FLX system.
The partnership is said to offer users a robust and streamlined workflow that minimises the number of manual steps required for targeted sequencing applications, including genotyping and rare variant detection.
Analysis of disease-associated regions and panels of genes by sequencing PCR products is critical in areas of oncology, immunology and virology research.
454 sequencing systems enable rapid analysis of large numbers of samples, but have shifted the bottleneck to amplicon sample preparation, a process that can take weeks using traditional approaches.
