With more companies than ever innovating in precision medicine, drug discovery, therapeuticdevelopment and genetic testing, the demand for high-quality,customised oligonucleotides is growing and will continue to do so. This means greater need for controlled pore glass (CPG), a critical component in the solid-phase chemical synthesis of oligonucleotides.   ..read more

In this latest instalment of our 'Know Your Oligo Mod' blog series, we explore the benefits of high-performance ATTO fluorescent dyes for labelling oligonucleotides. ATTO fluorescent dyes are a family of synthetic organic molecules that are widely used as fluorescent labels for biological imaging and analysis. They are developed by ATTO-Tec GmbH, in Germany, and are known for their high photostability and brightness compared to other fluorescent dyes of the same wavelength. Fluorescent labelling of oligonucleotides has numerous applications as probes and primers in molecular biology technique ..read more

In November 2023, the UK became the first country in the world to approve a gene therapy based on CRISPR-Cas9 technology. This Nobel prize-winning technique has been lauded as the future of medicine, and we are now seeing the fruition of decades of research.  ..read more

Creating a crop that is more effective at meeting the needs of farmers and end consumers is the aim of every plant breeder. Using a targeted genotyping by sequencing (GBS) approach can help scientists reduce SNP deserts (regions of the genome with low SNP density) to inform the development of a trait stacking programme, as well as generating the data for germplasm diversity analysis.  ..read more

Since Humira (adalimumab) became the first approved monoclonal antibody therapy developed using phage display in 2002, it has sold more than any other drug in history.1,2  Phage display is a technique that allows for screening astronomical numbers of proteins for potent binders, and it is now one of the most powerful ways of creating high-affinity monoclonal antibodies in vitro.1  ..read more

qPCR testing is usually the method of choice when high sensitivity and specificity are required. For instance, in diagnostic and forensic applications, qPCR allows the crucial detection of minute amounts of target material. While sensitivity is a significant advantage of qPCR this same trait also makes it vulnerable to contamination, leading to inaccurate results.   ..read more

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is the world’s third most important food crop after wheat and cereal and is a staple food for over 1.3 billion people. The overall value of the potato crop to the global economy largely comes from the processing of potatoes, with the industry in the USA alone valued at over $100B employing over 700,000 people1. The global significance of potatoes heightens the importance of combating the potato’s nemesis, late blight (Phytophthora infestans). Late blight, a quickly spreading disease, is caused by the oomycete pathogen and can have a devastating impact on the po ..read more

Image credit: HIV Reverse Transcriptase. RCSB Protein Data Bank. The Wellcome Collection ..read more

While RNA-based therapeutics are taking the biotechnology world by storm following the rapid development of the COVID-19 vaccines, the next generation of treatments could already be here.1 Despite being the lesser-known cousin of linear mRNA, circular RNA (circRNA) holds tremendous potential for emerging pharmaceutical applications by increasing the stability of the therapeutics and lowering manufacturing costs ..read more

Considering bringing oligo synthesis in-house? Here are some commonly asked questions that we receive, grouped into four sections. You can jump to a section of most interest using this small table of contents here.   ..read more