Pacific Biosciences of California Inc (PACB)

[Paulieme]

PacBio Blog Thursday, April 10, 2014 ---- Automating PacBio 10 kb Template Preparation
During our recent sample prep webinar, PacBio® scientists described new automated options for the 10 kb SMRTbell™ template preparation workflow. In case you didn’t have the chance to attend, here’s a quick recap.

The webinar was hosted by Marty Badgett, our consumables product manager, with field application scientist Mike Weiand and technical support scientist Kristi Spittle Kim. The goal of the session was to introduce two new automation solutions that were developed based on interest from customers for more streamlined sample preparation.

Both of the systems, available from PerkinElmer and Agilent Technologies, are designed to run up to 96 samples with SMRTbell HT template prep kit, our new high-throughput kit. As Marty told webinar attendees, these solutions boost flexibility and scalability while minimizing hands-on time, sample tracking errors, and project cost. They also improve consistency by reducing sample-to-sample and run-to-run variability that can be introduced by manual preparation. We recommend automated systems like these for production-mode facilities or for large projects where run-to-run consistency is essential. Both systems can now process anywhere from eight to 96 samples in eight hours or less.

We partnered with PerkinElmer on its Sciclone NGSx and Agilent on its Bravo NGS workstation to offer PacBio customers more automation with sample prep platforms that are often already in their labs. We anticipate additional solutions from other vendors later this year as well. Also, we are currently working on 2 kb and 20 kb protocols with each vendor, which may be released later this year.

The Sciclone and Bravo automated options for the 10 kb workflow were validated at customer sites. The validation testing showed good consistency across a range of organisms and various input sample amounts for both devices. Yield was comparable to what customers expect from manual prep.

The SMRTbell HT kit is delivered in a 4x24 format. To get more information about the kit or the automated solutions from PerkinElmer or Agilent, contact your local sales rep. And for details on how these extremely long reads can make a difference in your genomic and transcriptomic studies, don’t miss the next webinar with our CSO Jonas Korlach. “Gain New Insights in Genome and Transcriptome Research with >10 kb Reads” will be hosted on April 29 and April 30; just click your preferred date to register. http://blog.pacificbiosciences.com/2014/04/webinar-recap-automating-pacbio-10-kb.html