NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Dolomite today announced a collaboration with GigaGen to develop a new droplet merger chip for massively parallel single cell genetic analysis.
The two firms also have a licensing deal to offer the technology later this year to academic researchers, as well as commercial scientists.
Financial and other terms were not revealed.
The new glass microfluidic chip enables fast and consistent merging of two individual droplet streams and has applications that include DNA amplification, biochemical analysis, single cell analysis, and high-throughput experimentation, Dolomite said.
The company added that while other methods use "expensive and bulky" high voltage electronics to merge droplets by electrostatic forces, its technology squeezes droplets together in a "carefully designed merging chamber," resulting in a microfluidic device, "which points the way to low cost disposable chips in future versions."
Dolomite designs and develops microfluidic systems and devices and has offices in the US and the UK.
Based in the San Francisco, GigaGen develops genetic-based diagnostics that combines microfluidics, next-generation sequencing, and bioinformatics, according to its website.