Samplix has announced the commercial launch of its Xdrop sample preparation products for polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-free target enrichment, yet maintaining PCR-level specificity. Xdrop enables single-molecule resolution and bias-free enrichment of genomic regions longer than 100 kb from as little as 1-ng genomic DNA.
. Xdrop fits seamlessly with any sequencing platform and works equally well with both short-read and long-read sequencing systems. The Xdrop products were presented at the Genome Science 2019 conference in Edinburgh in on September, with an oral presentation entitled Xdrop– Targeted Sequencing into the Dark and Unknown.
"We are excited to launch our Xdrop sample preparation products that allow our customers to discover the true biological representation which we all acknowledge is challenging," said CEO Lars Kongsbak. "To put it simply, Samplix allows customers to get more out of their samples by eliminating today’s many shortcomings in sample preparation, such as bias and lack of representation, which jeopardise the downstream sequencing".
The Xdrop system builds on Samplix’ proprietary technologies to partition single molecules in microfluidics cartridges that are simple to use. The product offering comprises an Xdrop instrument for cartridge control, different microfluidics cartridges and several molecular biology consumables optimised to work with the microfluidics cartridges.
Samplix’ sample preparation is unique as it provides PCR-free enrichment of large single molecules spanning entire genomic regions. The long-range information may comprise, for example, phasing, structural variants, and repetitive sequences. Furthermore, as very little knowledge about the target sequence is required, Xdrop enrichment may equally be applied to investigate unchartered genomic regions.