NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Belgian instrument maker Trinean today announced that the UK Biobank has chosen the firm's DropSense96 droplet reader to quantify molecules during the DNA extraction stage of a large genotyping project.
The DropSense96, a multichannel spectrophotometer for spectral analysis of microliter droplets, quantifies biological molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins. The instrument measures DNA concentration and purity to find high-quality samples to be genotyped.
"The DropSense96 was selected in the DNA extraction workflow as it is readily automated and provided a means to extract and quantify a full plate of 96 samples in a single process, without the need for reagents," Samantha Murphy, UK Biobank senior project manager for genotyping, said in a statement.
The UK Biobank's project will genotype 500,000 samples to better understand the interaction of environment and genetic factors contributing to human diseases. In 2013, the biobank signed a contract with Affymetrix to create chip arrays to genotype the samples.