Affymetrix GeneChip WT Pico Kit for gene expression array target preparation

Affymetrix has introduced the GeneChip WT Pico Kit for gene expression array target preparation from as little as 100 pg of total RNA input. Working with as few as 10 cells, the kit offers a high degree of flexibility and precision, enabling analyses of samples too small for other methods as well as the interrogation of small subpopulations of cells within larger samples. This is particularly important to the study of heterogeneous solid tumour samples, haematologic malignancies and other precious samples.

For use with the Affymetrix GeneChip Whole-Transcriptome (WT) Arrays, the kit is compatible with small-sample isolation techniques, including flow cytometry, laser capture microdissection and fine needle aspiration. The kit prepares targets from multiple sample types, including fresh and fresh frozen tissues, cultured cells, FFPE specimens and whole blood samples without a globin mRNA reduction step. The use of a single kit for multiple sample types is said to improve the ability to better compare data from different samples.

The target preparation kit, combined with the GeneChip Human Transcriptome Array 2.0 (HTA 2.0) and Transcriptome Analysis Console Software, forms a solution for precise cell subset analyses claimed to be impossible with traditional whole-transcriptome analysis techniques, which require large numbers of cells and typically deliver measurement averages. Measurement of all transcript isoforms, including long non-coding RNA transcripts, is made possible by the high-resolution microarray-based gene expression profiling solution, which uses more than six million probes covering over 285,000 coding and non-coding transcripts and interrogates the entire length of each one.