Microfluidic card system that allows high throughput gene expression studies to be performed at a fraction of the usual time and cost
Applied Biosystems, in partnership with 3M, has developed the 7900HT micro fluidic card, a new assay system that allows high throughput gene expression studies to be performed at a fraction of the usual time and cost.
Customers choose their primer/probe sets from an extensive online Assays-on-Demand gene database and these are then pre-loaded onto assay cards at the Applied Biosystems oligonucleotide factory.
The user simply adds the samples and reagents through eight specially constructed fluid channels, seals the card and then runs the assay through the Applied Biosystems 7900HT sequence detection system as usual. Over 19,000 human and 9500 mouse gene-specific assays are available for customers to choose from, and between 12 and 384 primer/probe sets can be loaded onto any one card in up to ten different configurations.
Sample and reagent volumes are greatly reduced, as are time-consuming labour intensive pipetting steps. Any busy genomics laboratory would benefit enormously from being able to perform high throughput gene expression studies without fluid handling robotics, says Applied Biosystems.
