NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Eureka Genomics today said that the National Institute of Food and Agriculture has issued it a $100,000 grant to develop an assay to determine bovine parentage using multiplexed next-generation sequencing technology.
The project is related to a cooperative research and development agreement between Eureka and the Agricultural Research Service, USDA to develop a low-cost, low-density marker assay for the bovine industry. The core technology for high-throughput genotyping will have applications across animal, plant, and clinical markets, Eureka said.
Mark Thallman, research geneticist and co-inventor of the technology at the US Meat Animal Center, said that the collaboration has resulted in a cost-effective high-throughput method for SNP genotyping. Further development will be directed at increasing the number of SNPs that can be included on an assay, at reducing the costs of adding SNP to assays, and at expanding the method to include other types of polymorphisms, he said.