Case Study Demonstrates Importance of MIQE for qPCR Data Analysis
Published by Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. this case study demonstrates how real-time PCR can lead to erroneous conclusions if the key steps set out in the MIQE guidelines are not followed.

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NanoInk Announces Launch of Contract Services Program for Live Single Cell Assay Work
Service offering expected to advance research programs involved with toxicity assessment, high content screening, and cell-cell communication.

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Hamilton Introduces Automated DNA Sample Enrichment Solution
System uses Roche 454 REM e liquid handling system to replace hours of manual work.

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Roche’s Novel Tests for the Management of Hepatitis C Virus Infection Receive CE Mark
The tests detect HCV RNA, which is a crucial marker in the management of hepatitis C infection.

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Correction of RT–qPCR Data for Genomic DNA-derived Signals with ValidPrime
Henrik Laurell et al propose a novel method (ValidPrime) that is more accurate than traditional RT(_) controls to test qPCR assays with respect to their sensitivity toward gDNA by compensating for DNA background.

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A qPCR-Based Assay to Quantify Oxidized Guanine and Other FPG-Sensitive Base Lesions within Telomeric DNA
Telomeres are hexamer (TTAGGG) repeats that protect the genome against chromosomal instability and accelerated cellular senescence. This article describes a reliable, cost-effective quantitative PCR (qPCR)-based method to measure the amount of oxidized residues within telomeric DNA that are recognized and excised by formamidopyridine DNA glycosylase (FPG).

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Genomic Health Discovers New Gene Networks Associated with Breast Cancer
Study provides technical validation of whole transcriptome RNA-Seq as a powerful new tool for clinical research and development. Genomic Health will provide proprietary platform combining whole transcriptome profiling and mutation analysis for large clinical studies.

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Roche and Labcyte Integrate Echo and LightCycler Systems to Increase Performance of qPCR-based RNA/DNA Analyses
Companies cooperate around high-speed, miniaturized quantitative PCR (qPCR) to monitor the expression of tens to thousands of genes for therapeutic research.

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Quest Diagnostics Launches Simplexa™ Dengue Test in Brazil
Country's public health labs now evaluating the test's potential for aiding clinical management of the country's nearly one million Dengue fever cases.

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Identifying superior reference genes for data normalisation of expression studies via quantitative PCR in hybrid roses
Gene expression studies are a prerequisite for understanding the biological function of genes. Because of its high sensitivity and easy use, quantitative PCR (qPCR) has become the gold standard for gene expression quantification.

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New England Biolabs Introduces NEBNext® Oligo Modules
Modules enable the construction of singleplex or multiplex high yield libraries for DNA, ChIP-Seq or mRNA sequencing on Illumina® instruments. NEBNext Oligo Modules contain a novel adaptor that ligates efficiently to end-repaired, dA-tailed DNA.

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Anachem Becomes Exclusive UK Distributor for KAPA Biosystems' Reagents
Company awarded UK distribution rights for the novel range of molecular engineered reagents from KAPA.

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Nanoink Announces Launch of Contract Services Program for Live Single Cell Assay Work
Service offering expected to advance research programs involved with toxicity assessment, high content screening, and cell-cell communication.

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OGT to Exhibit and Present at Molecular Medicine Tri-Con 2012
The conference will include an OGT presentation entitled “Integrated Biomarker Discovery: Multi-Method Approach to Enable Early Biomarker Success”, taking place on Tuesday 21st February at 15.50 in the Moscone North Convention Centre.

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Fluidigm and AH Diagnostics Sign Distribution Deal for Scandinavia
AH diagnostics will offer Fluidigm's complete portfolio, including the complete line up of Dynamic Array(TM), Digital Array(TM) and Access Array IFCs for real-time PCR, digital PCR, single-cell gene expression, sample preparation for next-generation sequencing, and SNP genotyping.

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Lab21 Acquires New Real Time PCR Technology
Company expects to launch diagnostic assays using PCR technology during first half of 2012.

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ArcticZymes AS Announces Formation of ArcticZymes Inc. to Serve the Research and Molecular Diagnostic Market in North America
ArcticZymes Inc, located in Plymouth Meeting, PA, will be a subsidiary of ArcticZymes AS. The latter designs, manufactures, and commercializes cold water adapted enzymes for use in molecular biology and diagnostics.

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GenturaDx Announces Addition to Board of Directors
The newly appointed member, Michael Treble, is currently chairman and CEO of Axela, Inc. The five current directors will remain on the board.

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Exiqon Announces 2012 Grant Program for MicroRNA Research
The company announced the launch of its 2012 global research grant program, open to researchers from academic and non-profit institutions.

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Life Sciences Tools Companies must Adapt to Rapidly Changing Marketplace
The life science tools market has become quite cost-conscious, as labs are increasingly nervous about the research grant funding environment and are looking to conserve cash wherever possible.

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Hot Start Amplification using OligoBeads via Gradual Release of Bound Primers
CTGen

OligoBeads provide a mean to store normalized primers used in performing enzymatic reactions including PCR. Primer bound beads eliminate the potential for pipeting errors and reduce contamination thus yielding lower repeat rates and less reagent wastage. The primers bound to the OligoBeads can be stored over a period of a few months without degradation in a nuclease free environment.

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Target length effect on sensitivity and specificity of oligonucleotide microarrays: Advantages of a modified PCR based labelling method over the dendrimer technology.
1 College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK 2 Systems Biology Ireland and the Conway Institute, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Irel

Several methods have been developed for target labelling to enable DNA microarray quantification without taking careful consideration for target length effect. This report highlights the importance of choosing the optimum target length that would ensure specificity without compromising sensitivity of the assay. It also shows the advantages of using the modified PCR method over other methods in generating labelled amplicons of the desired lengths to maximize hybridization efficiency.

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On chip micro-extraction and real-time PCR with integrated SPAD optical fluorescence detection for nucleic acid analysis
FBK - CMM

A PDMS lab-on-a-chip for one step DNA isolation and real time-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has been designed, fabricated, and characterized for point-of-care clinical diagnostics. In addition, a module for on-chip optical detection based on SPAD - Single-Photon Avalanche Diode - detector has also been developed and used to monitor the presence of specific DNA polymorphisms possibly related to genetic diseases.

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Chemical Variant of 7-deaza-dGTP for Improved CG-rich PCR Amplification
TriLink BioTechnologies, Inc.

PCR amplification of nucleic acids is a fundamental technique used in many molecular biology laboratories. Despite its wide use, certain GC-rich regions of DNA, such as mycobacterial disease targets, still remain a challenge for amplification. Sequences high in GC content are associated with the formation of secondary structure, which prevents adequate strand separation and DNA polymerase amplification. As a consequence, mispriming is prominent, complicating specific product formation.

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Periodontal Pockets Microbiota qPCR Analysis at Different Stages of Periodontitis
DNA-Technology

Six major periodontal pathogens were quantified (with standardization to human gDNA) in periodontal pockets of periodontitis patients and healthy subjects by original qPCR assay. Relative amount of pathogens to total bacterial mass increased for P.gingivalis (100-fold), P.intermedia (10-fold) and T.forsythensis (10-fold).

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Low-volume on-chip single sperm cell analysis
Institute of Forensic Medicine, Medical University, Graz, Austria; University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria; Institute of Cell Biology, Histology & Embryology, Medical University, Graz, Austria; Rese

We performed low-volume on-chip DNA typing of single sperm cells isolated by means of laser microdissection. 16plex PCR was successful in 39 of 40 single cell samples yielding a mean PCR efficiency of 62.8%. In addition, we were able to identify a single-cell sample containing more than one cell enabling us to monitor the quality of the whole procedure, and hence, exclude “contaminated” samples from further analysis.

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Development and NDA-Level Validation of a Real-Time PCR Procedure for Detection and Quantification of Residual E.coli DNA Contamination of Biopharmaceutical Products
Aptuit, Inc.

Escherichia coli (E. coli) has been commonly used for the production of biopharmaceuticals. Among the impurities that must be monitored in biopharmaceuticals is residual host-cell DNA (HCD). This study describes the development and subsequent NDA-level validation of a real time PCR procedure developed in response to a client’s need to improve the sensitivity of detection and quantification of residual E. coli HCD in their drug product.

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Chemically Modified Primers for PCR and Ligation Applications
TriLink BioTechnologies

PCR is an essential tool with utility in a variety of advanced applications. To improve the specificity of PCR, a unique approach to "Hot Start" PCR employing primers containing thermolabile modifications has been developed. These modified primers, named CleanAmp™ Primers, are amenable for use in Hot Start activation schemes as the modification is released after an initial denaturation step.

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Development of a Test Battery for Epigenetic Non-genotoxic Carcinogens
Athlone Institute of Technology

The main objective of this sudy is to obtain an increased insight into the mechanisms of action of epigenetic carcinogens. Although the expected number of non-genotoxic carcinogens among newly registered compounds is unknown, there is a growing concern that when numbers of 2-year cancer bioassays are significantly reduced, non-genotoxic carcinogens may go undetected. Therefore there is a need for the development of alternative methods for their detection.

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Chemically Modified Primers for Improved Multiplex PCR
TriLink BioTechnologies, Inc.

Multiplex PCR is an advantageous technique used in PCR applications to amplify multiple targets in a single reaction. As useful as it is, this technique presents a new set of challenges that further complicates PCR setup. For example, reactions are more prone to off-target amplifications such as mis-priming and primer dimer due to the increased number of primer pairs.

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A MIQE Case Study — Effect of RNA Sample Quality and Reference Gene Stability on Gene Expression Data
Bio-Rad Laboratories

In this study, the minichromosome maintenance (MCM) protein, MCM7, was selected as a model target gene to investigate the importance of appropriate reference gene selection and RNA sample quality as described by the MIQE guidelines.

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Sequence-Specific DNA Assay
Molecular Devices

The Threshold® system from Molecular Devices, together with the Immuno Ligand Assay (ILA) kit can be used to measure specific DNA sequences. Biotinylated or fluorescienated oligonucleotide probes, specific to the target sequence, anneal to the digested target DNA creating a probe-target hybrid which can then be detected and quantified against a standard curve, with pleasing results.

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High Yield and Quality with Thermo Scientific Microtiter Deep Well 96 plates in KingFisher Flex Process
Thermo Fisher Scientific

The Thermo Scientific KingFisher Flex magnetic particle processor is specifically designed to automate the time-consuming sample preparation of proteins, nucleic acids and cells in 96-well plate formats.

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Isolation and Purification of Genomic DNA and Viral RNA from Clinical Samples with Thermo Scientific KingFisher Flex
Thermo Fisher Scientific

The purification of DNA and RNA from clinical samples requires rapid and reliable processing of large quantities of samples. Automated purification of nucleic acids, proteins and cells with Thermo Scientific KingFisher Flex is a reproducible and high quality method, which produces excellent material for further analyses.

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Efficient Delivery of Thermo Scientific Dharmacon SMARTpool siRNA Reagents in Difficult-to-Transfect Cell Lines Using Nucleofector® 96-well Shuttle® System
Lonza

siRNA-mediated gene knockdown is a powerful tool that has been used to identify gene function and elucidate biological pathways. Successful siRNA experiments involving knockdown of individual genes or collections of gene targets require efficient delivery of highly functional and specific siRNA molecules into appropriate cells.

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ScreenTape® Enables Fast Quality Control of miRNA qPCR Reactions
AnaSpec

The ScreenTape® System, developed by Lab901, employs a unique microscale polymer tape that contains all the reagents required for DNA electrophoresis. It brings major advantages of convenience, ease of use and safety to molecular biologists as absolutely no handling of gels and buffers is required.

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Advanced Software for Real-Time PCR Data Analysis by Integromics
Integromics

Got data? Get answers! Real-Time StatMiner™ is workflow oriented: a step-by-step guide to ensure reliable and accurate results using powerful statistics and interactive visualizations. Average time of analysis for all skill level users- just 10 minutes! Steps of the analysis consist of importing raw Ct data, performing quality control and outlier detection, examining correlation between biological replicates, selecting the optimal combination of endogenous controls for normalization based on sta

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Identify optimal reference genes for realtime-qPCR with GenEx MultiD Analyses AB
MultiD Analyses AB

Tailor-made for qPCR. Powerful. Easy to use. GenEx is a popular software for qPCR data processing and analysis. Built in a modular fashion GenEx provides a multitude of functionalities for the qPCR community, ranging from basic data editing and management, such as data pre-processing and group assignments, to advanced cutting-edge data analysis, such as PCA and ANN.

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BEBO-for qPCR and HRM
TATAA Biocenter

BEBO is an unsymmetric cyanine dye developed by TATAA Biocenter for use in qPCR applications. The dye has absorbance and emission wavelengths that can be detected on the FAM channel on most common real-time PCR platforms, and shows a strong fluorescence increase when bound to dsDNA. BEBO can be used as an unspecific dye for real-time PCR applications or other applications where staining of dsDNA is wanted.

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BOXTO-for qPCR applications
TATAA Biocenter

BOXTO is a derivative of BEBO, an unsymmetric cyanine dye developed by TATAA Biocenter for use in qPCR applications. The dye has absorbance and emission wavelengths that can be detected on the JOE channel on most common real-time PCR platforms, and shows a very strong fluorescence increase when bound to dsDNA.

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