Illumina has launched the HumanOmniExpress BeadChip (OmniExpress), the newest addition to the Omni family of microarrays for genome-wide association studies (GWAS).
The company claims that OmniExpress designed as a 12-sample Beadchip, allows interrogation of over 700,000 variants per sample totaling more than eight million available data points on a single chip. Coupled with the Illumina iScan System, OmniExpress enables processing of more than 1,400 samples per week, the highest throughput in the industry.
The markers on OmniExpress are a subset of the content powering company’s GWAS product, the HumanOmni1-Quad, and incorporate an optimized set of SNPs chosen from all three phases of the International HapMap Project.
As with the HumanOmni1, researchers starting with OmniExpress can take advantage of future supplemental Omni BeadChips containing new content derived from the 1000 Genomes Project. Priced at $250 per sample, OmniExpress offers a compelling entry point to the next generation of Illumina Omni arrays, said the company.
Jay Flatley, president and CEO of Illumina, said: “The OmniExpress is an extension of the Omni family of microarrays and provides the same high quality data as the Omni1 at a price that is among the most competitive in the industry. OmniExpress, and the recently announced BovineHD BeadChip, are the first two products incorporating Illumina’s 3rd generation array technology, delivering even more content, formats, and flexibility to researchers.”