SEATTLE, May 27 (GenomeWeb Daily News) - Researchers from Illumina and the Burnham Institute will publish the results of a joint collaboration that used Illumina's BeadChips to study the fundamental biology of human embryonic stem cells as soon as next month, an Illumina official told GenomeWeb News at the Northwest Gene Expression Conference, held here this week.
Tim McDaniel, staff science manager at the San Diego-based genotyping instrument company, said representatives from the Burnham Institute and Illumina would meet next week to iron out the kinks in their manuscript.
According to McDaniel, the Burnham Institute used Illumina's new whole genome Sentrix BeadChips to explore the "genomic plasticity and capacity for differentiation" of human embryonic stem cells.
"We do have a manuscript in draft form, but we haven't decided which publication to submit to" he said.
McDaniel told audience members at the conference that researchers have been profiling the embryonic stem cells, and have discovered that they express over 18,000 genes.
Researchers have also discovered that many genes characteristic of differentiated cell types are expressed at significant levels. He also said that the arrays classified undifferentiated cells from differentiated stem cell lines, regardless of the origin of the samples.
Illumina launched its whole genome BeadChips last March.