Picotiter plates are flat plates with multiple wells used as small test tubes. It is a miniaturised version of the
microtiter and
nanotiter plates that are standard tools in analytical research. Picotiter plates are used in the
DNA sequencing
DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine. The ...
strategy first exploited by a spin-off company (
454 Life Sciences
454 Life Sciences was a biotechnology company based in Branford, Connecticut that specialized in high-throughput DNA sequencing. It was acquired by Roche in 2007 and shut down by Roche in 2013 when its technology became noncompetitive, although ...
) and commercially available on the market. The picotiter plate platform enables parallel sequence analysis of 1.7 million of separate
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...
fragments and thus is capable of sequencing entire
genome
A genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding genes, other functional regions of the genome such as ...
s within a couple of hours. Titerplates can be produced from
photosensitive glass
Photosensitive glass, also called photostructurable glass (PSG) or photomachinable glass, is a glass in the lithium-silicate family of glasses onto which images can be etched using shortwave radiations, such as ultraviolet. Photosensitive glass ...
, such as
Foturan
Foturan (notation of the manufacturer: FOTURAN) is a photosensitive glass by Schott AG, SCHOTT Corporation developed in 1984. It is a technical glass-ceramic which can be structured without photoresist when it is exposed to shortwave radiation su ...
from
SCHOTT Corporation.
References
Laboratory equipment
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