Agilent announces solution for exon analysis based on SurePrint G3 Exon Microarrays

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today announced a solution for exon analysis based on SurePrint G3 Exon Microarrays. The solution provides a major expansion of Agilent's portfolio of gene expression reagents, microarrays and bioinformatics systems. This new system, available in mid-November, enables researchers to examine alternately expressed exons according to recently updated content, providing a global picture of RNA expression.

“Exon level arrays represent a significant step up in our ability to interrogate the genome in greater detail than traditional 3 prime biased arrays”

"We're continuing to fill out our gene-expression workflow with high-performance, cost-effective tools from RNA isolation kits through data interpretation and validation," said Sharoni Jacobs, Ph.D., Agilent product manager, Gene Expression. "In December we introduced the Low Input Quick Amp labeling kit, which requires only 10 nanograms of total RNA. Last May, we launched the third-generation SurePrint G3 Gene Expression microarrays, which include both coding and non-coding RNA targets on a single array."

Agilent is leveraging the performance and density of the SurePrint platform to provide a full-exon solution to help researchers discover the relationships between approximately 30,000 genes and more than 100,000 proteins.

Agilent SurePrint G3 Exon Microarrays enable researchers to identify both gene-level and exon-level expression changes in a single experiment to capture subtle but important biological changes. RNA is prepared for hybridization using Agilent's Low Input Quick Amp WT labeling kit for whole transcript labeling. Agilent's GeneSpring GX 11.5 bioinformatics system increases productivity even more by helping investigators analyze gene-level data and splicing indexes simultaneously.

"Exon level arrays represent a significant step up in our ability to interrogate the genome in greater detail than traditional 3 prime biased arrays," said early access user Stuart Pepper, head of the Cancer Research U.K. Molecular Biology Core Facility at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research, The University of Manchester. "Our initial work with these arrays has shown that we can obtain very clean data which will facilitate the detection and quantitation of alternate transcript expression."

Agilent offers catalog content for human, mouse and rat in 4x180K (four arrays per slide, 180,000 features each) and 2x400K formats, letting users choose between cost, throughput and comprehensive coverage. Like its other microarrays, Agilent also provides custom options for the human, mouse and rat SurePrint G3 Exon products. Custom formats include 8x60K, 4x180K, 2x400K and 1x1M.

Like all Agilent microarrays, the SurePrint G3 Exon solution delivers a wide dynamic range to detect low expressors and high expressors to accurately represent the range of expression levels and provide high confidence in the results.