NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Genome Sequencing Center at the Washington University School of Medicine will use NanoString Technologies’ digital gene expression technology in a large-scale diabetes study, NanoString said today.
NanoString said that Wash U is the second customer under its early-access program for the nCounter Analysis System, following the California Institute of Technology, which signed on for the system last month.
Wash U’s James Cheverud will use the system in a diabetes study that aims to validate the expression of more 50 genes across 15 tissues in more than 900 samples.
"If we wanted to perform this study with QPCR it would have been over 55,000 individual reactions. We can complete the entire study on the nCounter Analysis System in about 900 reactions and in a fraction of the time," Cheverud said.
The system will be placed in the technology development laboratory led by Elaine Mardis, co-director of the Wash U Genome Sequencing Center.
Seth Crosby, director of translational research at the center, said in a statement that the system will be “an ideal complement to the whole-genome microarray services we offer.”
The nCounter Analysis System uses molecular barcodes and single-molecule imaging to detect and count hundreds of transcripts in a single reaction, NanoString said.