NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Agilent Technologies and BGI announced today an agreement to create a "next-generation super exome."
The deal calls for the partners to develop methodologies for next-generation genome-wide association studies in order to create a super exome that incorporates sequence regions that may be more informative for specific human populations.
The methodologies are expected to help scientists in the areas of disease and drug research, Agilent and BGI said.
BGI will use Agilents portfolio of solutions or genomics research and next-generation sequencing tools, including its SureSelect target-enrichment system and Agilent's 2100 bioanalyzers. Agilent will also grant BGI early access to new tools it develops for sequencing.
"Together with Agilent's expertise, we can create more precise and accurate technology that can be deployed in large-scale research to better understand complex diseases, which may have differences between ethnicities," Hui Jiang, associate director of the science and technology department at BGI, said in a statement.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.