High throughput generation of water-in-oil emulsions for molecular genetic analyses

Researchers have developed a technology called BEAMing (Beads, Emulsion, Amplification and Magnetics), which can assess millions of molecules simultaneously for the study of human genetic variation (see invention number 4273 for more details). Following the development of BEAMing, JHU researchers made an improvement to the technique. In BEAMing, for every amplicon to be queried there needs to be a different emulsion. A new emulsion-making procedure allows for the creation of 192 different emulsions at one time thereby increasing the automizability of the technique. . Description (Set) Proposed Use (Set) BEAMing has many advantages over current amplification methodologies. 1. Requires simple instrumentation readily available in most laboratories. 2. Sensitivity of the technique can be increased by simply adding more beads. 3. Detects the presence of rare DNA variants in a population and also quantifies their proportion. 4. Variant DNA molecules can be recovered for further downstream analysis. 5. The emulsion-making procedure allows for the creation of 192 different emulsions at one time thereby increasing automizability of BEAMing. BEAMing technology is capable of analyzing DNA variants within any organism and may also be used to quantify the proportion of methylated and unmethylated DNA templates in a sample when coupled to bisulfite DNA treatment. BEAMing could also be used with random DNA fragments from whole genomes that may identify sequence associated with specific DNA binding proteins. This technology could be used as a diagnostics tool for screening for known disease mutations and for common epigenetic changes in diseased tissues. Patent (Set) WO 2007/149432

Inventor(s): Vogelstein, Bert

Type of Offer: Licensing



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