Applied Biosystems teams up with BioTrove for genotyping applications

Applied Biosystems is to collaborate with BioTrove on the commercialisation of an integrated platform for high throughput genotyping applications.

Aiming to enable researchers to perform high throughput genotyping studies at a lower cost, Applied Biosystems will develop and market custom-built arrays of TaqMan SNP genotyping assays pre-loaded on BioTrove’s OpenArray platform.

The company will also retain the option to collaborate with BioTrove for developing and commercialising the OpenArray platform for high throughput gene expression applications.

A spokesperson for Applied Biosystems commented that the collaboration is expected to expand the potential uses of TaqMan technology across a wide range of genomic applications.

"When pre-loaded with TaqMan SNP genotyping assays, BioTrove’s OpenArray platform enables researchers to perform genotyping studies that investigate tens to hundreds of single base changes, or SNPs – single nucleotide polymorphisms – across hundreds to thousands of samples," said the representative.

"This scale of genotyping study is often performed as part of breeding and quality control processes in the agricultural industry," he added.

In a separate agreement, the firm has granted a worldwide licence under patent rights related to real-time thermal cyclers, microfluidics, and data analysis to BioTrove.