Message #67 From:
Stock News Bot Date: February 21, 2007 04:00:00 AM
ABI News New Applied Biosystems Reagent Kit Improves DNA Analysis
FOSTER CITY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Applied Biosystems (NYSE:ABI), an Applera Corporation Business, today announced a new reagent kit designed to improve the workflow for DNA sequencing. The BigDye® XTerminator™ Purification Kit addresses the often cumbersome purification or ‘clean-up’ step in the Sanger Sequencing workflow to produce higher quality DNA sequence data faster and with significantly fewer steps than other purification methods.
Sanger sequencing is considered to be the gold standard method for DNA analysis. Part of the workflow includes a clean-up step to remove by-products of the sequencing reaction from the labeled DNA fragments. If these by-products are not removed, they can result in shorter sequence read lengths and what scientists refer to as dye blobs, making it difficult to accurately interpret results or obtain high quality data.
The BigDye XTerminator Purification Kit is designed to shorten the amount of time and work required to perform the purification step, and to do so in a manner that is more reliable than other available methods. For example, a commonly employed method of DNA purification is ethanol precipitation, which uses ethanol to separate DNA from the unwanted by-products of the sequencing reaction. This particular method involves nearly a dozen steps taking an hour or more, and does not guarantee dye blob removal. As a result, sequencing reactions frequently must be repeated in order to obtain accurate results.
Laragen, Inc., a service laboratory that performs DNA sequencing and analysis services for academic and commercial clients, is one of several organizations that tested the BigDye XTerminator Kit. “We have tried virtually all of the commercially available methods for DNA purification, and the BigDye XTerminator Purification Kit has provided us with the highest quality results we’ve seen and with less manual labor than the other methods,” said Jin Li, Ph.D., vice president of Laragen. “Using this kit, we get very strong and even signals from beginning to end and longer sequencing reads, without dye blobs or lost samples.”
The BigDye XTerminator Purification Kit involves a simple 4-step protocol that provides more reliable dye blob removal, increased sample stability, and more reproducible, higher-quality results. The kit consists of two reagents, the XTerminator™ Solution, which binds impurities but leaves DNA in solution, and the SAM™ Solution, an additive that enables complete removal of unincorporated terminators and stabilizes sequenced DNA fragments. The product is designed to work in conjunction with the Applied Biosystems BigDye® Terminator sequencing chemistry, which is used to amplify and create fluorescent dye-labeled terminated fragments for automated sequencing analysis.
“The number of samples run for Sanger-based sequencing applications continues to increase worldwide,” said Kim Caple, Ph.D., senior director and general manager for Applied Biosystems’ genetic analysis business. “One of our objectives at Applied Biosystems is to enable our customers to spend less time on sample preparation and the sequence clean-up process and instead enable them to focus on data generation and interpretation.”
The BigDye XTerminator Kit is part of Applied Biosystems’ industry-leading portfolio of instrument systems and chemical reagents for DNA analysis. More information is available at www.appliedbiosystems.com.
About Applera Corporation and Applied Biosystems
Applera Corporation consists of two operating groups. The Applied Biosystems Group serves the life science industry and research community by developing and marketing instrument-based systems, consumables, software, and services. Customers use these tools to analyze nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), small molecules, and proteins to make scientific discoveries and develop new pharmaceuticals. Applied Biosystems' products also serve the needs of some markets outside of life science research, which we refer to as "applied markets," such as the fields of: human identity testing (forensic and paternity testing); biosecurity, which refers to products needed in response to the threat of biological terrorism and other malicious, accidental, and natural biological dangers; and quality and safety testing, for example in food and the environment. Applied Biosystems is headquartered in Foster City, CA, and reported sales of over $1.9 billion during fiscal 2006. The Celera Group is primarily a molecular diagnostics business that is using proprietary genomics and proteomics discovery platforms to identify and validate novel diagnostic markers, and is developing diagnostic products based on these markers. Celera maintains a strategic alliance with Abbott Laboratories for the development and commercialization of molecular, or nucleic acid-based, diagnostic products, and it is also developing new diagnostic products outside of this alliance. Through its genomics and proteomics research efforts, Celera is also discovering and validating therapeutic targets, and it is seeking to develop therapeutic products based on these discovered targets through strategic partnerships. Information about Applera Corporation, including reports and other information filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is available at http://www.applera.com, or by telephoning 800.762.6923. Information about Applied Biosystems is available at http://www.appliedbiosystems.com/.
Applied Biosystems Forward Looking Statements
Certain statements in this news release are forward-looking. These may be identified by the use of forward-looking words or phrases such as “should, "planned,” and "expect," among others. These forward-looking statements are based on Applera Corporation’s current expectations. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a “safe harbor” for such forward-looking statements. In order to comply with the terms of the safe harbor, Applera Corporation notes that a variety of factors could cause actual results and experience to differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements. These factors include but are not limited to: (1) rapidly changing technology and dependence on the development and customer acceptance of new products; (2) sales dependent on customers’ capital spending policies and government-sponsored research; and (3) other factors that might be described from time to time in Applera Corporation's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All information in this press release is as of the date of the release, and Applera does not undertake any duty to update this information, including any forward-looking statements, unless required by law.
