NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – BioNano Genomics today announced it and BGI are partnering to develop new multiplexing methods on BioNano's Irys genome mapping system.
New methods will be developed to enable higher sample throughput using fewer reagents, which the firms said will be especially useful for large-scale studies.
The Irys system was chosen by BGI to comprehensively study human structural variation and improve assemblies of various organisms of interest, including those that have no reference assemblies. The platform detects all types of structural variations in a single run, resulting in rapid and accurate de novo genome assembly and genome completion, the firms said.
They added that the platform reveals the "biologically and clinically significant order and orientation of functionally relevant components of complex genomes, including genes, promoters, regulatory elements, the length and location of long areas of repeats, as well as viral integration sites across the entire genome that are often implicated in the cause of complex diseases, such as cancer."
BGI Deputy Director Xun Xu said in a statement that his firm required a platform to investigate large structural variations that could not be accessed readily by sequencing, DNA arrays, or other technologies. "Now it is feasible to do population-scale, comprehensive large structural variation discovery on a single technology platform using BioNano's Irys system," he said.