NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – RainDance Technologies said today that it has signed the J. Craig Venter Institute as an early-access partner for its microfluidics-based sequence-enrichment technology for next-generation sequencing.
Under the terms of the agreement, JCVI will have access to the company’s RDT 1000 instrument and Sequence Enrichment application, which are based on RainDance's RainStorm droplet-based technology platform.
The RDT 1000 generates picoliter-volume PCR reactions at a rate of 10 million reactions per hour, and the Sequence Enrichment application uses a library of PCR primers in droplets to amplify hundreds to thousands of genomic loci in a single tube, the company said.
Under the early-access agreement, RainDance said it is providing the RDT 1000 instrument, training, and customized PCR primer libraries designed to selectively amplify loci of interest for research initiatives at JCVI.
Robert Strausberg, deputy director and group leader in genomic medicine at JCVI, said in a statement that the institute’s scientists will use the RainDance technology in “various large-scale targeted sequencing studies.”
RainDance expects to launch the system commercially in the first quarter of 2009.