Roche NimbleGen and Baylor College Develop an Improved Version of Sequence Capture 385K Arrays

Roche NimbleGen in cooperation with the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas has launched an improved version of their Sequence Capture 385K Arrays, the technology for enriching targeted genomic regions for high-throughput sequencing.

The new and improved microarrays have been designed to allow researchers to perform their own capture experiment and perform sequencing of enriched regions using next-generation technology such as the Genome Sequencer FLX System from 454 Life Sciences.

The entire workflow, starting from genomic DNA, to enriched DNA of target regions, and sequencing results takes about two weeks, compared to months or years for traditional PCR-based methods coupled with capillary sequencing. These second version microarrays will also be available through Roche NimbleGen’s Sequence Capture Service.

A critical performance measurement for enrichment technologies is to capture all the target regions with equal efficiency. NimbleGen second generation Sequence Capture Arrays deliver improved performance regarding the specificity and uniformity of captured regions.

For researchers wanting to perform NimbleGen Sequence Capture in their own lab, in line with what Baylor College of Medicine is doing, Roche NimbleGen can deliver the custom-designed Sequence Capture Arrays to the researcher, together with the essential equipment, reagents, and consumables. On-site customer workshops are also available for researchers to gain valuable hands-on experience under the guidance of certified Sequence Capture trainers.

With solutions for whole human exome capture on the horizon using NimbleGen Sequence Capture Arrays, investigators will finally have the necessary tools to achieve the types of targeted re-sequencing studies.