Specifications for Pulse-Field Power Supply for HMW and low input.pdf

Specifications for Pulse Field Electrophoresis System for HMW and Low Input

The bioinformatics lab at the Knipling Bushland U.S. Livestock Insects Research Laboratory is participating in the Ag100 Pest Initiative. The goal of the initiative is to “Produce annotated, reference quality genome assemblies for the top 100 US arthropod agricultural pests. When possible, generate PacBio long-read data from a single individual.” Long reads require DNA fragments of high molecular weight (HMW), and obtaining genomic DNA (gDNA) from single individuals produces relatively low concentration gDNA. We need a pulse-field gel electrophoresis system capable of separating HMW DNA (up to 165 kb) given low input (as low as 50 fg/μl) to determine if gDNA samples obtained from a single individual produces enough HMW fragments to produce long-read data. The Pulse Field Electrophoresis system is the field standard piece of equipment uniquely suited for this task. It is specifically engineered to separate our the HMW DNA at the highest resolution available, making it a critical piece of equipment when size selection is needed for sample preparation. This system is important for our ability to extract the precise size DNA fragment for down stream processing that is very sensitive to even the slightest irregularities. Without the use of this system we will be unable to precisely quantify our DNA sample size and will not be able to produce accurate results which may compromise our findings during analysis.