NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Eureka Genomics said today it is developing a custom assay for genotyping barley in collaboration with Scotland's James Hutton Institute.
The assay, which will be priced at $15 per sample, will allow for the identification of more than 400 SNPs in a single test, giving researchers the option of a low-cost method for identifying and optimizing traits such as yield, quantity, and environmental resilience for commercial crop production, Hercules, Calif.-based Eureka said. It plans to launch the assay next month in Europe and the US.
The assay will be developed based on next-generation sequencing and can be broadly applied to detect SNPS, copy number variations, presence/absence and methylation. It is compatible with DNA and RNA from almost any organism even when information about the genome is missing, Eureka said
"The collaboration has resulted in a very cost-effective, medium-throughput approach to single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping, a fundamental technology in both genetic studies and contemporary crop improvement programs worldwide," Robbie Waugh, head of genetics at the James Hutton Institute, said in a statement.