Invitrogen Launches Solutions to Simplify DNA and RNA Workflows on Next-Generation Sequencing Systems

Invitrogen, part of Life Technologies Corporation has announced the introduction of two reagent solutions to simplify genomic and transcriptome analysis on next-generation, high-throughput genomic analysis platforms.

Both solutions provide basic and clinical researchers with a workflow that can reduce the time, cost, and experimental variability associated with next-generation sequencing library preparation.

The RiboMinus™ kit and the E-Gel® SizeSelect™ 2% pre-cast agarose gels simplify the workflows and reduce the experimental time and cost of applications such as discovery and characterization of the entire transcriptome, validation of whole genome association results, targeted resequencing, chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), rare and somatic mutation detection, and epigenetic studies.

The solutions are compatible with next-generation high-throughput genome analysis platforms, including Life Technologies’ Applied Biosystems SOLiD™ System, Illumina’s Genome Analyzer and Roche’s Genome Sequencer FLX System.

The RiboMinus for RNA-sequencing kits are available in two configurations: a universal kit for eukaryotes and a more specialized kit for plants. They are used for the enrichment of RNA for whole transcriptome analysis for ribonucleic acid sequencing or RNA-Sequencing applications.

The kit enables the depletion of large ribosomal RNA, the most abundant RNA in the transcriptome, by using oligonucleotide probes containing locking nucleic acids and magnetic bead separation technology. The ability to deplete the ribosomal RNA is significant because the abundant RNAs often mask the messenger RNAs that play an influential role in gene expression, which may affect the detection of novel RNA transcripts within a cell.

The E-Gel SizeSelect 2% pre-cast agarose gels are designed to simplify the separation and recovery of nucleic acid fragments of less than 1000 base pairs for short read fragment library construction. For most next generation sequencing platforms, the nucleic acids strands need to be broken into smaller fragments of specific size ranges to sequence templates in applications, such as targeted and whole genome resequencing, transcriptome analysis, small RNA discovery, ChIP analysis, methylated DNA profiling and de novo assembly.

E-Gel SizeSelect 2% system can reduce the time needed to complete this step from hours to less than 15 minutes. The E-Gel system has been used in fragment and mate-pair/paired end library construction on the Applied Biosystems SOLiD System and the Illumina Genome Analyzer.