NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Pacific Biosciences and Advanced Analytical Technologies (AATI) today announced today that they will jointly promote both companies' technologies for long-read DNA sequencing.
Under the agreement the firms will comarket AATI's Fragment Analyzer and PacBio's SMRT sequencing technology, as well as a codeveloped analysis kit to analyze larger DNA fragments for sequencing library prep.
PacBio customers expressed a need to be able to more quickly size long DNA fragments or libraries up to 50 kilobases, which the Fragment Analyzer technology can do, Steve Kujawa, senior director of market strategy and business development at PacBio, told GenomeWeb.
Using pulsed field gel electrophoresis it takes about 16 hours to accurately resolve fragments of this size, and the recommended PacBio long-insert library prep requires this to be done several times, Kujawa added. "To be able to [accurately size fragments up to 50 Kb] in only one hour with the Fragment Analyzer is the real benefit for the customer," he said.
PacBio is also currently an early-access collaborator for AATI's Fragment Analyzer Femto Pulse, which can analyze fragments up to 165,000 base pairs.
"That's important for sizing high molecular weight genomic DNA to make sure it is larger than the average size of the library you are trying to make, assuming the [DNA sample] starting material is long enough" Kujawa said.