Bio-Rad Laboratories this week released PrimePCR assays for its Droplet Digital PCR systems.
This release expands the company's current offering by an additional 46 mutation detection assays and 323 copy number assays. In addition, the existing set of gene expression qPCR primer-only assays can now be used with Bio-Rad's recently launched QX200 Droplet Digital PCR system, featuring EvaGreen detection capabilities.
Bio-Rad's ddPCR technology provides an absolute measure of target DNA molecules, and together with the PrimePCR mutation detection assays can enable the detection of one mutant in a background of 100,000 wild-type sequences, the company said. Due to their high precision and absolute measurement capability, ddPCR assays also enable the quantitative discrimination required to resolve small-fold changes in gene copy numbers, and can also be used to detect subsequent changes in the expression of target genes, the company said.
PrimePCR ddPCR assays are available in multiple reaction sizes and are compatible with both the QX100 and QX200 platforms using the ddPCR supermix for probes.
Linkage Biosciences this week announced the launch of LinkSeq, a real-time PCR KIR genotyping test.
Killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR) are a family of cell surface receptors found on human natural killer cells with known associations to autoimmunity, viral progression, tumor immunity, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Linkage's genotyping test "dramatically simplifies laboratory workflows compared to previous KIR typing methods while providing clear and accurate results," the company said.
Linkage's homogeneous test can be run and analyzed on standard real-time PCR instrumentation without the further analytical techniques required by other tests. Linkage's test identifies all the major KIR genes including specific variants in 2DL1, 3DL1, and others.