Applied Biosystems Adds a Million TaqMan® SNP Genotyping Assays to Its Collection
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Applied Biosystems, an Applera Corporation business, has announced it has added a million assays to its collection of pre-designed, ready-to-use TaqMan® SNP Genotyping Assays.
The assays are designed to provide access to the recently completed International HapMap data set and include 11,000 assays for putative functional single nucleotide polymorphisms that occur in coding regions of genes, also referred to as coding SNPs.
Applied Biosystems said its collection of 3.4 million assays is the largest set of ready-to-use genotyping assays available to investigate genetic variation of medical and biological importance in the human genome, and for conducting population based studies and basic research.
The collection also represents the complete pre-designed, genome-wide assay set based on the International HapMap Project data set.
The assays are designed for use on the Applied Biosystems real-time PCR sequence detection systems.
Inherited genetic variations influence susceptibility to disease, including complex diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and can also play a role in adverse drug reactions.
By studying patterns of genetic variation using genotyping experiments, researchers can find clues on how to better prevent, diagnosis and treat disease.
These studies can also reveal valuable information about human evolution and basic mechanisms of genetic regulation.
With the recent completion of the HapMap project, Applied Biosystems has developed one million assays for the latest HapMap data set to bring its total number of assays for this data to 2.6 million.
"The completion of the HapMap Project has contributed a wealth of data for disease researchers," said Mark Stevenson, president of the molecular and cell biology division of Applied Biosystems.
"Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for scientists to mine these and other available SNP data, select the optimal SNPs for their studies and get straight to the work of uncovering variations of medical significance."
Applied Biosystems Introduces Assays for Disease and Pharmaceutically-relevant Coding SNPs
Applied Biosystems also added 11,000 assays for coding SNPs, which are designed to identify genetic variations that cause changes at the protein level.
These variations are more likely than other variations in the non-coding regions to cause predisposition to disease or influence positive or negative response to drug therapy.
For example, the coding SNP assays include a set of variants in genes that are common drug targets and for genes previously implicated in genetic diseases.
With this release, the collection now includes 60,000 total assays for coding SNPs, which makes this the comprehensive set of assays for such potentially functional SNPs.
Applied Biosystems also announced that it has updated its free SNPbrowser™ software tool to include the entire HapMap data set and the newly available genotyping assays.
The SNPbrowser software is designed to allow scientists to visualize SNPs of interest in their genomic context, along with linkage disequilibrium maps and putative haplotype blocks derived from the analysis of six million SNPs and 650 million genotypes for four ethnic populations: African-American, Caucasian, Chinese and Japanese.
The software provides an intuitive, visual interface to guide selection of optimal sets of SNPs for association and fine mapping studies, as well as a direct link to order Applied Biosystems TaqMan and SNPlex™ System assays.
Available as a free download, the latest version, SNPbrowser software v3.5, also allows users to view and export the complete set of HapMap SNPs in all genomic regions, whether or not assays are available for a specific SNP.
