Bio-Rad’s New ddPCR™ Library Quantification Kit Optimizes Performance of Ion Torrent NGS Systems

Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., today announced the availability of its new ddPCR™ library quantification kit for Ion Torrent library preparation. Used with Bio-Rad’s QX200™ Droplet Digital™ PCR system, the new kit provides researchers with the ability to precisely and directly measure amplifiable library concentrations.

The Ion AmpliSeq library kit is used to prepare libraries for Ion Torrent next-generation sequencing (NGS) systems. Using the ddPCR library quantification kit to quantify Ion AmpliSeq gDNA and RNA libraries maximizes the number of useable reads, enables consistent loading, and optimizes the utilization of every sequencing run. The resulting data provide additional measures of library quality not provided by other methods, including the percentage of nonamplifiable species such as adapter dimers and the size range of library inserts.

Additional key benefits of the ddPCR library quantification kit for Ion Torrent systems include:

• Superior performance — produces highly precise measurements of amplifiable library concentrations without the use of standards
• Visualization of library quality — ddPCR fluorescence amplitude plots highlight well formed and poorly formed libraries
• Efficient utilization of sequencing runs — enables consistent loading and maximum efficiency of the Ion Torrent sequencing platforms

Kits for other NGS platforms are also in development.