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Can anyone tell me if they have ordered a kit from a company called Auspex Genomics? They sent us a kit which we used but a lot of targeted regions were not captured at all. I tried contacting them but no one ever responded. If anyone else has run it please let me know. Also we can't run the tool they sent us.
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They gave us a list of ninety genes that they said we would capture. And they gave us a hand written protocol. We captured ninety two genes. Some of the genes we captured were not in the list and several of the listed genes were not there at all. No one at the company is emailing us back and we don't know how to contact them. I just want to know if anyone else had similar results? It looks like they amplify just the exonic regions serially. But the thing we can't figure out is how they capture everything and how do they do it at that consistency? We have between 8 and 41 reads for each amplicon. And except for the missing genes we captured everything. The other question I have is anyone else using their software? We were unable to get it working. They told us it an add-on for increasing accuracy on Proton but they have no documentation and the installation does not work. Just frustrated and feel like it might be something but these guys are terrible at communicating.Comment
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Hi. Sorry that we did not answer your emails. We receive a couple hundred emails a day now and we are doing our best to get to everyone.
Ok, the software: if the software download was copied before it was installed then it will be disabled. i can send you another download. Just private message me if you'd like.
The genes that were not there: I don't know when you received the kit. But we did make a mistake when we were labeling the kits a few weeks ago. The main problem was that we included the BRCA genes and a few others in our kit but we decided to remove those genes because we did not want to get in trouble. I am guessing that you ended up, somehow, getting one of the older kits. How many tubes did you have? Did you have 2 protocols? If so, then you have the kit which contains BRCA1 and BRCA2 (plus some others...which is why you had extra genes) and you had two different steps for those tubes in the protocol. Also, the missing genes were probably genes that we had to legally remove. We should have included a note which explained that.
I am glad that you (I think...) seemed to think it was worth it? And, again, I apologize that we did not get back to you.
If you or anyone else in this forum has any questions I will do a better job of responding here. We receive too many emails right now for us to really get through them in a few days. And I was checking this forum but some people on here seemed mad at us so I did stop checking everyday because I was tired of some posters who seemed irritated with us (who knows why..).
Oh...and one more thing: did you follow the primary protocol exactly? The differences that you are getting in your reads are somewhat off for what we and other groups are getting. But the low number of 8 reads is pretty low. I am guessing that you ran the bar-coded version? And if so, how much of the total run was dedicated to our kit? Our software should help with the number of valid reads.Comment
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We got the kit a coupl weeks ago. We used the barcodes. We allocated half of our run for this based on what you guys told us. I understood the first protocol and now I think I understand the second. I see that you are claiming that you can sequence BRCA legally so let me be the first to guess how you did it. You cannot copy it so you found a way to restrict it. That is why we needed such a large sample. Am I right?
Yes. We think it might be something.
We folowed both protocols exactly as written. We did not copy your software. It just never installed.Comment
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You are not exactly right about how we did it. Not totally exactly... But for sure, we have figured out a way to scan for those genes that are patented and protected by the useless Supreme Court decision.Originally posted by Jonnyb View Post
**And before anyone here gets irritated by me calling the decision useless, please just understand that I actually read it and I know it is useless but at least it means that Myriad and the other gene patent holders can't keep us all from moving forward with the research on those genes. It just means that, unfortunately, for many people who could benefit and live longer from knowing they have the genes will still not be rich enough to afford the test that would potentially save or extend their lives...which means some people will die because those companies wanted the money.
Again...not begrudging capitalism or profit-making...just really wanted the Supreme Court to rule that any test (which is not patented) can be used by anyone...the BRCA1 test we made costs us a few cents for each run, if we jam a lot of samples in one run...the idea that Myriad can charge $4,000 for that test and no other companies can highlight that gene and then tell you if you have it is utterly ignorant..although I am pretty certain that other labs will come up with even better methods than we did
...and long-term I feel that the ruling will ultimately push current efforts on gene sequencing away from PCR amplification and on to new ideas.
Bottom line (and sorry for writing too much...if you are bored, stop reading): if I have a gene then I want to know about it. If there is a cheaper way for me to know about the gene in my body then I don't want the government to keep me from knowing what I have just because some company feels that they should be compensated because they found it first. If companies are THAT concerned about making giant profits on finding genes and understanding their roles in disease then they should be clever enough to find a way to make their test a trade secret. The desire to patent a gene is utter selfishness (especially for a company that understands that genes are inside us all and easy to confirm now).Comment
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Genomics studies in neuroscience face a special challenge due to the brain’s complexity and scarcity of samples. Mapping changes in cell type and state using conventional next-generation sequencing methods remains challenging. Advances in technologies like single-cell sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, and long-read sequencing have opened the door to deeper studies of the brain and diseases like Alzheimer’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and schizophrenia.
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Cancer survival rates have significantly increased in the last few decades in the United States, reaching a combined 70% 5-year survival rate by 2021. Behind this number, there are years of research to find new therapies, drug targets, and early detection methods. But there is one core challenge that keeps slowing down these advances, and it’s about drug resistance.
There is no single reason why many patients don’t respond to treatment as expected. Cancer is...07-08-2026, 05:17 AM -
Love this - good data definitely starts from good input, and poor input can only give relatively poor data. I particularly like the mention of Nanodrop/absorbance based methods for quantification. It's such a toss up if you'll get an accurate reading or what amounts to a randomly generated number, and a lot of library/sequencing related issues can be traced back to poor quant.07-01-2026, 11:43 AM
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