Illumina began taking orders for a new whole-genome expression product for rat that analyzes 12 samples in parallel on a single BeadChip. Content for the new RatRef-12 Expression BeadChip is derived from the NCBI RefSeq database (Release 16) with over 22,000 rat transcripts represented. The multisample format makes it an ideal tool for studies in toxicology, biomarker discovery, and disease modeling, where many samples need to be processed seamlessly and with high uniformity, according to Illumina.

“The RatRef-12 BeadChip provides a powerful system to acquire consistently uniform and standardized data for many samples and is a significant advance for large-scale scientific projects of biomedical relevance in the rat,” comments Dominique Gauguier, researcher at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at the University of Oxford and a principal tester of the RatRef-12 product. “There is good data correlation between the rat whole-genome arrays that our lab had been using previously and the RatRef-12 BeadChip, making it even easier for us to transfer our work to the RatRef-12.”

“The high levels of concordance evidenced by the Federal MicroArray Quality Control Study (MAQC) and noted in the field testing of the rat product continue to validate that researchers are able to choose their gene expression platform primarily based on factors such as cost, ease of use, and quality of content,” says Shawn Baker, Illumina’s gene expression scientific product manager.

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