Stratagene Introduces A New Product For Human Splice Variant Discovery

La Jolla, CA - Stratagene Corporation, a developer, manufacturer and marketer of specialized life science research and diagnostic products, announced the commercial availability of the Human SpliceMiner cDNA Library Panel. This new product greatly simplifies the process of discovering rare and unique alternative splice forms that would have otherwise been difficult or impossible to detect by current methods.

"Defects in mRNA splicing are an important cause of disease. Alternative splicing has also been found to be associated with cancer and may also play a role in the pharmacological properties of drugs. Many of our SpliceMiner panel cancer cell lines are in use at the National Cancer Institute of the US National Institutes of Health to screen for anticancer drugs," said David Weber, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Stratagene. "We believe that the area of alternative splicing is a growing market and that the new SpliceMiner panel provides an effective discovery method that can be practiced in any molecular biology laboratory."

The Human SpliceMiner cDNA library panel consists of ~4.6 million primary cDNA clones derived from 15 high-quality cDNA plasmid libraries representing 28 cancer cell lines and 32 normal human tissues, including 14 sub-regions of the brain. The SpliceMiner panel design facilitates capture of rare mRNAs and is enriched for complete cDNA transcripts, while maintaining mRNA representation found in the original human source material.

Unlike a traditional cDNA library where the entire content is pooled into one highly complex sample, SpliceMiner cDNA clones are arrayed into 384 lower complexity pools (4 x 96 well format). The pools are strategically segregated to enhance the probability of amplifying one specific splice variant per well. The segregated pool in each well contains ~12,000 clones. By amplifying multiple lower-complexity pools, the statistical probability of finding a single splice variant of a particular mRNA is vastly improved, especially for low-to-medium abundance transcripts.

The new Human SpliceMiner panel is a perfect downstream solution for those wanting to find new splice variants of their gene and to further analyze data generated with new exon and tiling arrays recently introduced into the market.

SOURCE: Stratagene Corporation