CARLSBAD, Calif. and SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE) today announced several new products and protocols to improve workflows for Ion Torrent DNA sequencing applications, demonstrating the unparalleled speed, scalability and simplicity that Ion Torrent delivered in 2011.
“In 2011 we scaled semiconductor sequencing 100x and simplified the workflow with Ion OneTouch,” said Ion Torrent Founder and CEO Dr. Jonathan M. Rothberg. “We also developed our first killer app, the most important enhancement to PCR since RT qPCR: Ion AmpliSeq technology. It’s ideal for researchers and clinicians that are focused on genes of interest in cancer and genetic disease.”
Ion 318 chips have begun shipping commercially and are expected to deliver up to 1 Gb of high-quality DNA sequencing data per run, 10 times more throughput than the Ion 316 Chip, which was released six months ago. The Ion 314 Chips, Ion 316 Chips and Ion 318 Chips all work on the same Ion Personal Genome Machine (PGM) Sequencer, giving scientists the flexibility to match a chip with the output and price that best fits their research needs.
“We’ve used the new Ion 318 sequencing Chip with great success,” said Donna Muzny, Director of Operations, Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine. “In the initial testing, we routinely achieved runs of 1Gb aligned Q20 data in combination with the Ion OneTouch for template prep. This advancement is very exciting for rapid exome and diagnostic sequencing applications providing capacity and fast cycle times.”
“We are impressed by the performance of the Ion 318 chip,” said Dr. Niall Lennon, Assistant Director, Process Development, Broad Institute of Harvard & MIT. “Producing over 1Gb of sequence data in a single run of just a few hours, these chips have opened up many new application areas for the Ion PGM Sequencer. A single run produces enough data to call SNPs in several microbial-sized genomes, or to validate/detect over 1,000 mutations in ~50 patients.”
Ion AmpliSeq Custom Solutions enable researchers to interrogate targeted genomic regions using up to 1,536 amplicons in a single tube, in a single day. Targeted resequencing panels are a quick, affordable and easy to use sequencing option when scientists know which regions of the genome they want to study. Beginning in March, researchers can use the Ion AmpliSeq Designer Software to design custom panels, which will be delivered about four weeks after entering the design.
Ion AmpliSeq Technology offers the easiest, simplest workflow for targeted sequencing:
- Library construction takes just 3.5 hours and minutes of hands-on time
- Ion AmpliSeq technology requires just 10 ng of starting DNA
- Push-button analysis tools help identify thousands of known or novel
