Whole transcriptome amplification

Sigma-Aldrich has launched the TransPlex Whole Transcriptome Amplification (WTA2) technology. TransPlex technology is said to be a fast, sensitive and robust method for amplifying total RNA from a variety of sample tissue sources such as animals, plants and microorganisms. Optimised for formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissue samples, WTA2 is the second addition to the suite of WTA products designed to study RNA in vitro,

The technology creates a cDNA library from the total RNA template and then amplifies the cDNA library in a single PCR reaction. The reagents and protocols, designed to provide clonal and stochastic amplification of all expressed genes and exons, allow RNA samples to be amplified 1000- to 10,000-fold in less than 4 h.

The technology is suitable for use with partially degraded RNA as in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue derived from tumour samples.