Researchers using the rat as a model will find the assays a fast, easy to use and cost effective alternative to developing and optimising their own
Applied Biosystems has recently launched Rat Assays-on-Demand gene expression products, a set of validated, ready-to-use genomic assays for gene expression studies.
Researchers using the rat as a model for disease research, or for the safety assessment of drugs and chemical substances in toxicology studies, will find the assays a fast, easy to use and cost effective alternative to developing and optimising their own.
The assays are based on well-characterised transcripts from the NCBI Reference Sequence (RefSeq) Project database for rat genes, and Applied Biosystems plans to offer assays for the majority of the genes listed as well as those that produce drug-metabolising enzymes.
In addition, the assays have been designed to be strain-neutral, thus avoiding areas of known polymorphisms and DNA sequence variations.
The pre-formulated assays are dispatched either configured on Applied Biosystems 7900HT microfluidic cards or in 2D bar coded tubes for use with the ABI Prism 7900HT, 7700 and 7000 sequence detection systems.
Both formats include a CD with assay ID numbers, gene names, reporter dye and quenching information, which can be uploaded into sequence detection software or a Lims system.
More than 1500 TaqMan probe and primer sets are now available from the Applied Biosystems e-commerce site and there are plans to increase this to 3500 in the future.
