Illumina last week announced that a 12-sample Infinium DNA Methylation BeadChip for use in epigenetic research will become available in the first quarter of next year.
Using the array, researchers can assay approximately 27,000 CpG sites per sample, covering more than 14,000 well-annotated genes with single CpG resolution, Illumina said.
The company said that content for the panel was derived from genes described in the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Consensus Coding Sequence database. It features a core set of protein-coding regions as well as more than 1,000 cancer-related genes and 200 CpG sites located within CpG islands found in promoter regions of microRNA genes.
Last week Illumina also introduced its MicroRNA Assay for Gene Expression profiling.
The company said that the assay is priced at $95 per sample and was developed with content from the Sanger Center’s miRBase sequence database. Illumina first discussed its miRNA assay last month (see BAN 9/18/2007).
Sapio Sciences has released a copy number variation analysis tool to support Illumina’s Infinium arrays.
The Exemplar Analytics 4.0.8 tool provides CNV analysis and also supports all Illumina DNA analysis beadchips. Additional features include principal components analysis for admixture corrections; allele counting of hemizygous SNPs; and an update of the annotations database with current information from dBSNP, Entrez Gene and Gene Ontology.
BioMicro Systems last week launched its MAUI Wash System for microarray processing following hybridization.
The system automatically washes and dries up to 12 microarray slides simultaneously, reducing the variability of results obtained compared to manual processing, according to the company. The instrument fits in the workflow of mid- to high-throughput laboratories and ideally works in conjunction with BioMicro’s MAUI 12-Bay System, the company said.