Digital is the new absolute

Finding a needle in a haystack

Researchers performing sensitive applications such as copy number variation and rare target detection often find themselves struggling to identify faint genetic signals against a strong background, especially when it is a single positive lost in a dense pool of negatives. Finding the rare allele or mutant sequence is a typical needle in a haystack problem! By partitioning the sample into a large number of individual reactions, digital PCR makes it surprisingly easy to detect the single positive. It is in such instances where the lower limit of detection excludes standard real-time quantitative PCR as a viable solution.

At QIAGEN, our mission is to empower you with everything you need to overcome challenges in real-time and digital PCR research applications. In the end, finding a needle in a haystack might not remain as challenging as it sounds.

"Digital PCR allows precise, reliable, inferences of methylation levels and allows us to take epigenetics from the laboratories into the future of precision medicine."

"We have used digital PCR because we needed a very good method with good sensitivity. We used it because we are sure the sensitivity is better, and there is a good precision. "

Peter Böhm and Nina Kjersgaard,
Department of Clinical Genetics, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen

Advantages over droplet digital PCR technology

The nanoplate-based technology offers significant benefits over droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). These include:

• Fixed partitions prevent variation in size and coalescence
• Sealed nanoplates prevent well to well contamination
• Faster readout possible due to simultaneous reading of all partitions of a sample
• User-friendly, familiar plates are easy to pipet just like for qPCR
• Plates are amenable to front-end automation