17 May 2013 - 17 May 2013 - US sequencing platforms developer Pacific Biosciences of California Inc (NASDAQ:PACB) and life science products firm Sage Science said on Thursday they will combine two of their products to offer clients improved ability to sequence longer DNA fragments.

Under the parties' co-marketing deal, they will provide customers of Pacific Biosciences' PacBio RS II DNA Sequencing System with the ability to sequence even longer DNA fragments when conducting Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing with the addition of Sage's BluePippin size selection platform.

Pacific Biosciences' senior VP of market development Kevin Corcoran said that the company has discovered BluePippin's usefulness for applications where long read lengths are important, such as de novo genome assembly. Corcoran said further that the firm's studies have shown that size selection with Sage's BluePippin platform is an easy addition to Pacific Biosciences customers' sample prep workflow that selects for 10 kb or larger fragments for sequencing on the PacBio RS II.