External RNA Controls Consortium Names Testing Sites for Initial Phase of RNA Control Testing.SANTA CLARA Santa Clara, city, Cuba Santa Clara (sän`tä klä`rä), city (1994 est. pop. 217,000), capital of Villa Clara prov., central Cuba. , Calif. -- The External RNA RNA: see nucleic acid. RNA in full ribonucleic acid One of the two main types of nucleic acid (the other being DNA), which functions in cellular protein synthesis in all living cells and replaces DNA as the carrier of genetic Controls Consortium (ERCC ERCC Excision-Repair Cross-Complementing ERCC Engine(s) Running Crew Change ERCC Electric Reliability Coordinating Council ERCC Excision-Repair, Complementing Defective, in Chinese Hamster ) announced today that eight testing sites have registered for the initial phase of the RNA control testing. The initial phase will be conducted by commercial organizations that manufacture microarrays and/or reagents for QRT-PCR QRT-PCR Quantitative Reverse-Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction , as well as one government lab that produces arrays. The ERCC is an international group of scientists that is working together to define a set of standard RNA controls, protocols and analysis tools to assess intra-platform technical performance for gene expression assays. The eight registered testing sites include Affymetrix, Agilent, Applied Biosystems Applied Biosystems, Inc. (formerly NASDAQ: ABIO) is the original name of a pioneer biotechnology company founded in 1981 in Foster City, California, among the Silicon Valley cities of the southern San Francisco Bay Area. , GE Healthcare GE Healthcare is a $18 billion (USD) unit of General Electric (GE). It employs more than 46,000 people worldwide and is headquartered in Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom. GE Healthcare is the first GE business segment headquartered outside the United States. , Illumina, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Qiagen and Roche Molecular Systems. The proposed ERCC Test Plan was published in October 2005 in BMC (BMC Software, Inc., Houston, TX, www.bmc.com) A leading supplier of software that supports and improves the availability, performance, and recovery of applications in complex computing environments. Genomics. http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/6/1/150. "The outcome of testing will be identification of a set of controls that work reasonably well on most microarray platforms and by QRT-PCR," said Janet A. Warrington, Ph.D., chairholder of the ERCC and vice president, Emerging Markets and Molecular Diagnostics Research and Development, Affymetrix. "A number of organizations have donated existing controls or created controls for testing and all sequences are being deposited in Genbank." The ERCC will be accepting applications for other non-manufacturing or non-production sites for control testing in different types of biological samples later this year. About the External RNA Controls Consortium (ERCC) The ERCC is an ad-hoc group with approximately 200 members from more than 65 private, public and academic organizations. The group was founded in 2003 to develop a set of external RNA controls, related protocols and analysis tools. The ERCC is open to all interested parties. For more information, please visit: www.imclgs.org and www.nist.gov. For more information contact: janet_warrington@affymetrix.com. |
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