EnviroLogix said this week that it has entered into a collaboration with Douglas Scientific to develop and optimize products for high-throughput real-time and endpoint nucleic acid analysis.
Under the pact, the companies will combine EnviroLogix's isothermal DNAble v2.0 chemistry with Douglas Scientific's Array Tape platform.
DNAble is an isothermal amplification technology that can amplify both RNA and DNA targets 1 billion-fold with single-base resolution in five to ten minutes at a single and constant temperature and from crude sample preparations, Portland, Me.-based EnviroLogix said.
According to the company, DNAble's amplification process begins with a nicking enzyme that nicks the DNA structure at specific recognition sites. A polymerase then extends from the nicked site, displacing the original opened single strand. These single strands then hybridize with both forward and reverse DNAble templates, and the reaction begins to occur at an exponential rate, yielding a detectable target in less than 10 minutes, EnviroLogix said.
Array Tape is a continuous 0.3-mm-thick polypropylene strip serially embossed with miniaturized reaction wells in customized volumes and formats. This format allows 200 microplate equivalents (about 76,800 reaction wells) to be spooled onto a single, compact reel, making it an automated, adaptable microplate replacement for high-throughput screening,
The technology can support multiple assay types. Last week, Douglas Scientific and Life Technologies announced a collaboration and co-marketing agreement to pair Life Tech's TaqMan real-time PCR-based genotyping assays with the Array Tape technology for high-throughput genotyping applications (PCR Insider, 7/19/2012).
EnviroLogix and Douglas Scientific did not specify the types of applications for their combined technology. However, EnviroLogix, a subsidiary of Ensign-Bickford Industries, primarily plays in the agricultural biotech, food/feed safety, horticulture, environmental, and veterinary markets. Similarly, Douglas Scientific's primary market focus is high-throughput genotyping for agricultural biotechnology and molecular-assisted breeding.
"The substantial improvement in throughput with DNAble alone is significant, but when combined with … Array Tape … it becomes revolutionary," Dan Malmstrom, president and COO of Douglas Scientific, said in a statement. "By partnering with EnviroLogix, we can provide end-to-end qualitative and quantitative nucleic acid testing automation solutions that break the current paradigms of qPCR."