NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – New England Biolabs today announced it has licensed Genomic Health's technology for depleting abundant RNAs and has incorporated it for the first time in the NEBNext rRNA Depletion Kit.
The NEBNext line of products are reagents that facilitate RNA and DNA library preparation for next-generation sequencing.
According to NEB, depleting abundant RNAs is crucial for performing RNA-seq experiments at a lower cost. Ribosomal RNAs can constitute about 90 percent of total RNA and must be removed from a sample in order to focus on the RNA molecules of interest. Doing so can be especially difficult in low-input and formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded RNA samples, and Genomic Health's technology, which uses RNase H-based depletion, addresses this challenge.
"The NEBNext rRNA Depletion Kits exhibits efficient removal of these abundant RNAs, reducing the number of sequencing runs required, and ultimately the overall cost of sequencing," Fiona Stewart, NEB's next-generation sequencing product marketing manager, said in a statement. She also noted that the kit incorporates a streamlined workflow and is optimized for inputs as low as 10 nanograms total RNA.
Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.