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Applied Biosystems Unveils Primer Design Software and Bisulfite Conversion Kit
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Applied Biosystems, an Applera Corporation business, has introduced its methylSEQr™ Bisulfite Conversion Kit, a set of prepackaged reagents for bisulfite conversion, and Methyl Primer Express® Software, a free software tool that automates the design of methylation-specific PCR or bisulfite sequencing primers.
"DNA methylation is an emerging and rapidly growing research area in which scientists are seeking to understand the molecular changes underlying both health and disease," said Mark Stevenson, president of the molecular and cell biology division of Applied Biosystems.
"Using advanced technologies and reagents for DNA methylation research and other genetic analysis applications, researchers have the opportunity to greatly impact the development of new diagnostics and therapeutics for complex diseases, such as cancer."
The Methyl Primer Express® Software is designed to simplify methylation-specific PCR and bisulfite sequencing by automating the primer design process.
The user interface allows researchers to enter their target DNA sequence and simulate bisulfite conversion for methylated and unmethylated genomic DNA.
This decreases time spent managing the challenges associated with non-specific primer amplification and mis-priming.
The results generated by the software provide high quality sequencing and PCR designs that can be integrated into follow-on experiments using Applied Biosystems portfolio of DNA sequencing and fragment analysis solutions.
"With issues such as non-specific primer amplification and mis-priming, designing experiments for methylation-specific PCR and bisulfite sequencing PCR can be laborious and time-consuming," said Manel Esteller Badosa, Ph.D., director of the Cancer Epigenetics Laboratory at the Spanish National Cancer Center and co-designer of the software.
"Methyl Primer Express addresses this problem by providing a simple solution that automates the essential steps involved in designing sequence-specific DNA methylation experiments in less than five minutes."
The Methyl Primer Express® Software is available as a free download via the Web.
The Applied Biosystems methylSEQr™ Bisulfite Conversion Kit is a set of conveniently packaged bisulfite-conversion reagents that enables the comparison of sodium bisulfite treated DNA sequences with sequences from untreated genomic DNA.
The kit uses a straightforward procedure that provides for identification of methylation patterns and forms the first step in an integrated three-step analysis workflow.
PCR amplicons generated after bisulfite conversion can be sequenced directly or cloned, then sequenced.
