Kreatech's PlatinumBright nucleic acid labelling kits uses the Universal Linkage System - ULS - a proprietary labelling technology that has been engineered to give very reproducible labelling densities, both inter- and intra-experimental protocols, without the use of enzymes that can cause biases.
In ULS-based labelling reagents, a platinum group forms a co-ordinative bond with the labelling target, firmly coupling the label to the target. ULS labels DNA, RNA and nucleotides by binding to the N7 position of the Guanine base.
ULS accepts a variety of labels and haptens, including fluorescent groups, biotin, dinitrophenol and horseradish peroxidase. All types of probes used for cytogenetic analysis can be efficiently labelled with fluorescent-ULS reagents, which allow the direct visualization of the hybridisation signals.
Hybridisation efficiency, found for fluorescent-ULS labelled chromosome-specific probes, is above 95 per cent.
While the labelling in the PlatinumBright kits have been designed to provide the optimal labelling density for Fluorescent in situ hybridisation (FISH) applications, the ULS labelling reaction in these kits are also suitable for filter hybridisations such as Northern Blots, Southern Blots, Spot Blots and Dot Blot hybridisations as well as usewith Tissue Arrays and ChIP on Chip experiments (labelling of promoter fragments after Chromatin immuno precipitation).
ULS labelling of nucleic acids is a one-step procedure that is completed within 30 minutes. "The PlatinumBright nucleic acid labelling kits offer the researcher the possibility to non enzymatically label their target nucleic acid of choice, proceeding to use this labelled material in several hybridisation applications," said Brent Keller, general manager/VP Commercial Operations for Kreatech.
Other advantages of using ULS include its labelling compatiblity with plasmid, cosmid, PAC, BAC, DOP-PCR and genomic DNA. When coupled with Kreatech's proprietary sequence enrichement technology (SET) the production of "repeat free" DNA probes is enabled.
DNA probe diagnostics is already a well-established work area in the IVD market, but has certainly not reached its full potential yet. Especially the development of applications aimed at cancer diagnostics and genetic testing where additional growth in this segment is expected.
Among these new applications are tests for the detection of mutations related to drug resistance of bacteria and viruses, as well as the detection of genetic mutations that predispose an individual to cancer.
Another important area is the analysis and diagnosis of genetic diseases, where the ability to assess multiple gene loci may prove to be useful in the risk assessment of disease development.