Product Enhancement Provides More Reads at Longer Lengths and Reduces Sample Input Requirement Five- to Ten-Fold
MENLO PARK, Calif., Sept. 19, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. (Nasdaq:PACB) provider of the PacBio(R) RS High Resolution Genetic Analyzer, today announced the launch of the MagBead Station for the PacBio RS, a product enhancement that delivers more high-value long reads, enables use of small sample amounts, and makes sample preparation more robust.
The MagBead Station upgrade and associated MagBead kit enable sequencing of longer templates, especially for samples that are biologically difficult to prepare. This results in more 4-10 kilobase long reads captured with each SMRT(R) Cell. Because the process is more robust, sequencing results have higher overall consistency. It also significantly reduces the amount of the input sample required, which can be critical for experiments when there is a small amount of useable DNA available from a sample.
The Broad Institute is among the PacBio customers that had early access to test the MagBead Station upgrade. "Initial runs using the MagBead Station on the PacBio RS look very promising," said Chad Nusbaum, Ph.D., Scientific Director of Broad Technology Labs at the Broad Institute. "The MagBead Station greatly reduces any adapter-dimer that may be present in some libraries and there are clearly benefits in terms of how much library is consumed during loading a sequencing run.
Compared to diffusion loading, approximately one-tenth the library is needed to load each SMRT Cell, allowing us to contemplate much deeper sequence coverage from a single library preparation."
"This upgrade is consistent with our intention to provide continuous ongoing improvements to the PacBio RS. With this latest enhancement, we expect our customers will be able to generate 10 kilobase-size libraries using as little as one microgram of sample, a five to 10-fold improvement from where we were just a few months ago," said Michael Hunkapiller, Ph.D. President and Chief Executive Officer of Pacific Biosciences. "We expect that our automated MagBead Station will make a substantial difference in customers' ability to run experiments on challenging samples because it will reduce the impact of the variability in sample prep while reducing the amount of sample needed to perform highly accurate sequencing."
The upgrade is being provided to current customers and will be directly integrated into the PacBio RS for new customers. For more information about Pacific Biosciences, please visit www.pacb.com.
About Pacific Biosciences
Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. (Nasdaq:PACB) offers the PacBio(R) RS High Resolution Genetic Analyzer to help scientists solve genetically complex problems. Based on its novel Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT(R)) technology, the company's products enable: targeted sequencing to more comprehensively characterize genetic variations; de novo genome assembly to more fully identify, annotate and decipher genomic structures; and DNA base modification identification to help characterize epigenetic regulation and DNA damage. By providing access to information that was previously inaccessible, Pacific Biosciences enables scientists to increase their understanding of biological systems.
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