Illumina Launches High-Density Bovine BeadChip

Illumina, Inc. announced today the next-generation High-Density Bovine BeadChip (BovineHD) array product using its Infinium(R) HD assay. The chip contains data from more than 20 diverse breeds that was generated from recent sequencing largely done with Illumina Genome AnalyzerIIx technology. The BovineHD BeadChip will interrogate more than 500,000 loci, representing over ten times more genetic markers than the company's industry-leading BovineSNP50 BeadChip.

"We're excited about this collaboration and the research potential for our new BovineHD product, which broadens the company's leadership in the high-complexity agriculture research market," said Jay Flatley, president and chief executive officer of Illumina. "While the BovineSNP50 will continue to be the industry's premier genetic screening panel, the addition of the BovineHD to Illumina's product portfolio will serve as a powerful research tool for enabling more discoveries of quantitative traits and expanding the diversity of bovine breeds assessed in genetic prediction."

The product is the result of an international collaboration involving Illumina and a number of leading agricultural research organizations, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), Pfizer Animal Genetics, the University of Missouri, the National Association of Livestock and Artificial Insemination Cooperatives in France (UNCEIA), and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA). The team performing the SNP discovery and selection was led by Dr. Curt Van Tassell, research geneticist at USDA-ARS.

"Our collaboration with Illumina to develop this high-density chip supports our desire to develop strategic partnerships that harness the power of genomic innovation for the benefit of the bovine research community and for our cattle producer customers," said Nigel Evans, vice president of Pfizer Animal Genetics.

In a joint statement, Maurice Barbezant, director of the UNCEIA in France, and Didier Boichard, chief of Animal Genetics at INRA, said: "The new BovineHD will be an important additional whole-genome research array to complement the current genomic tools available for the identification of agriculturally important genes and for a deeper implementation of genomic selection in cattle. In genomic selection, it will prove especially useful for between-breed analyses and in populations for which the size of a reference population is currently limited."

The BovineHD BeadChip is available now for advance orders, with initial shipments to collaborators beginning at the end of the first quarter of 2010. Broad commercial shipments are expected to begin in the second quarter of 2010.