Loop Genomics, the single molecule long-read sequencing company with a hardware free solution, has expanded its kit and services capabilities to provide researchers with new ultra-high resolution Microbiome sequencing solutions using long-reads on Illumina sequencers. The four new kits are a low biomass (e.g. Human skin) phased V1-V9 full-length 16S kit with picogram input amounts and zero Human DNA background, a phased 18S-ITS1-ITS2 long-read solution for ultra-high resolution fungal Mycobiome profiling that interrogates a ~2.5KB contiguous region of the genome (this kit also has a low biomass version) and a 16S read-cloud kit which offers a lower cost solution for labs seeking UMI-based Microbiome quantification with V1-V9 coverage, but without V1-V9 phasing.

By using Illumina sequencing instruments coupled with Loop Genomics sample prep kits researchers reduce costs and gain significant insights with a plug and play kit that utilizes low cost core sequencing consumables when compared to other long-read platforms. A lab simply needs to replace their sample prep kits for their Microbiome experiments with Loop’s sample prep kits.

Loop Genomics provides these affordable Microbiome kits ($29-$40/sample), and services ($149-$199/sample) to identify the presence and relative abundance of organisms in the Microbiomes the kits are testing for using UMI’s and phased long-reads on any Illumina sequencer.

In addition, Loop’s computational pipeline, included in the cost of the kit, not only does the computationally intensive recreation of the long-reads from clouds of short reads but also provides actionable reports so researchers can quickly figure out the next experiment they’d like to perform.

According to Tuval Ben Yehezkel PhD, CEO and founder of Loop Genomics, "With early adopters of the new kits and services including Arkansas Children’s Hospital, SARDI, UC Davis and the USDA these new products are solving immediate needs and generating some very interesting data. We are proud to continue to leverage our core technology to bring three new kits, the first of their kind in the Microbiome space to market, and we will continue to translate the latest advances in synthetic long read sequencing into products for researchers in their pursuit of getting better genomic data."

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