Singapore: Agilent Technologies has expanded HaloPlex target enrichment system, which will now be available on Ion Torrent's Personal Genome Machine, a benchtop sequencing solution.

The HaloPlex system features a unique paired-end design, which positions reads at both target ends using a single-end sequencing run. By taking advantage of the extra coverage that the paired-end design provides, researchers will be able to save sequencing costs and time.

"The HaloPlex technology makes it possible for us to capture specific sets of genes in a single reaction," said Mr Peter Ray, head of molecular genetics at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada. "So far we have gotten great coverage of the mutations we were looking for. By combining HaloPlex with Ion Torrent we are able to generate sequencing data for our targets in a single day."

HaloPlex continues to break barriers common to other target enrichment technologies and can now enable larger capture sizes during desktop sequencing of up to 5Mb or approximately 2,000 genes on a MiSeq personal sequencer. HaloPlex offers greater efficiency and improved performance and, with the new update, it allows researchers to process up to 250,000 amplicons in the same tube.