Identifying Chromosome Reconfigurations in Cancer

The U.S. National Cancer Institute (Bethesda, MD, USA) has reached agreement with a developer of high throughput DNA sequencing technology to begin a project to identify chromosome reconfigurations in human cancers.

Lynx Therapeutics (Hayward, CA, USA; www.lynxgen.com) will employ its trademarked massively parallel signature sequencing technology (MPSS), designed to generate sequence information from millions of DNA fragments. The MPSS technology approach eliminates the need for individual sequencing reactions and the physical separation of DNA fragments required by conventional sequencing methods.

MPSS technology enables the simultaneous identification of nearly all the DNA molecules in a sample. With one million or more of Lynx's trademarked Megaclone microbeads fixed in a single layer array in a flow cell, solvents and reagents can be washed over the microbeads in each cycle of the process. A proprietary protocol elicits sequence-dependent fluorescent responses from the microbeads, which are recorded by a CCD (charged couple device) camera after each cycle. Short 17- to 20-base-pair signature, or identifying, sequences are constructed through this process without requiring fragment separation and separate sequencing reactions as in conventional DNA sequencing approaches. Proprietary instrumentation and software to automate the delivery of reagents and solutions are used in the sequencing process and to compile, from the images obtained at each cycle, the signature sequences that result from each experiment.

"The fact that MPSS permits the rapid and economical characterization of millions of DNA molecules in parallel will enable scientists to address a wide range of biological questions that had previously been out of reach,” said Dr. Thomas J. Vasicek, vice president of business development at Lynx Therapeutics. "MPSS is the only technology with such a dramatically high throughput. We had previously focused the technology on gene expression analysis; now it is thrilling to see the impact of MPSS on the broader DNA analysis field.”




Related Links:
Lynx Therapeutics
National Cancer Institute