Lynx Therapeutics, Inc. announced today the publication, as the cover article in the June issue of Nature Biotechnology, of a landmark scientific paper describing the Company's proprietary Massively Parallel Signature Sequencing (MPSS®) technology and its application to the characterization of gene expression. The technology, already in use by several commercial customers of Lynx, identifies simultaneously, by unique signature sequences 16-20 bases long, hundreds of thousands of cDNA molecules in a single run on one of Lynx’s proprietary systems. Thus, nearly the full expression profile of a particular cell or tissue, which requires sampling and characterizing about one million cDNA molecules, can be rapidly achieved in just a few runs. 

By identifying each of the 1,000,000 cDNA molecules sampled from a cell or tissue by their signature sequences, MPSS® quantifies the expression of each cDNA by a direct count of the number of times that molecule's signature appears. Even cDNA molecules expressed in as little as a few copies per million can be detected and counted. Lynx believes that no other technology today can provide this full a characterization of gene expression in a practical and economical manner. To date, the Company has deployed 31 MPSS® systems to exploit this advantage.

"With the completion of the human genome sequence nearly at hand, an important new application of Lynx's MPSS® technology is emerging," said Sam Eletr, Ph.D., Chairman of Lynx, and one of the co-authors of the paper. "It is beginning to be appreciated that the next milestone in the development of genomics will be the availability of full gene expression information for all cells and tissues, rather than the partial data available today. Lynx's technology makes it possible and practical to approach this goal." Norrie Russell, Ph.D., the Company's CEO, added that "growing recognition of this fact has added significantly to Lynx's business opportunities." He said that the Company, "in addition to pursuing applications for its technologies in selected Pharma and AgBio collaborations, is now in discussions with others interested in working with Lynx to rapidly construct complete expression databases that could be made broadly available to researchers by subscription." 

Company news release
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