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 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 fragments and thus is capable of sequencing entire
genome
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, 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 g ...
s within a couple of hours. Titerplates can be produced from
photosensitive glass
Photosensitive glass, also known as photostructurable glass (PSG) or photomachinable glass, is a crystal-clear glass that belongs to the lithium-silicate family of glasses, in which an image of a mask can be captured by microscopic metallic par ...
, such as
Foturan from
SCHOTT Corporation.
References
Laboratory equipment
{{Chem-stub