Gene Expression


The age of mRNA isoform discovery at #AGBT19

Single-cell isoforms from long-reads take the stage at the Advances for Genome Biology and Technology, along with structural variation and better reference genomes. Underlying all these advances is better long-read technology from Pacific Biosciences and Oxford Nanopore. Thinking a little further about the overarching theme of this year’s Advances in […]


NanoString’s Digital Spatial Profiling Microscope at #AGBT18

Now that another year has passed it is great to see the NanoString Digital Spatial profiling microscope near its commercial launch. The platform will be in early access to select customers in the fourth quarter of 2018, and full commercial launch in the first half of 2019. For those interested […]


Targeted RNA Sequencing Approaches 1

There are several commercial methods for looking at 10’s or 100’s of gene expression levels via a high throughput TaqMan™ assay from Life Technologies / Thermo Fisher Scientific, a competitive offering from Roche, Douglas Scientific, or also Fluidigm. The limitation of these technologies however is the amount of multiplexing a […]


The Fluidigm C1™ Single Cell Auto Prep System 1

Every human being came from a single cell. While that fact may not be so obvious in our day-to-day routine, the power of a single cell is observed with the burst of research activity in stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells (and also see the Nobel Prize winner for […]


Single molecule in-situ RNA startup Advanced Cell Diagnostics

FFPE (Formalin-fixed paraffin embedded) tissues are standard preparations in the clinical world. It has been estimated that there are millions of FFPE samples stored in countless hospital laboratories and research pathology groups, all part of a standard operating procedure among pathologists and other hospital personnel. These tissue samples are embedded […]


Readlengths do matter in Next Generation Sequencing 5

Recently I was asked about how important readlengths are, in the context of where MiSeq and Ion Torrent PGM currently stand in the marketplace. As the 454 advertisement used to say until recently, ‘Length Matters’. Given a number of recent announcements from Ion Torrent and the other folks in San […]