April 1, 2022 – OraSure Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: OSUR), a global leader in point-of-care and home diagnostic testing and sample collection technologies, announced today that its’ Diversigen subsidiary has launched a new service to provide metatranscriptomic sequencing and analysis of gut microbiome samples.
“This is an exciting service as metatranscriptomics helps researchers understand gene expression and gain insights regarding both function and mechanism,” said Kathleen Weber, President, Molecular Solutions for OraSure Technologies. “Changes in the function of the gut microbial community can be associated with disease onset and aging, as well as the effectiveness of interventions such as pharmaceuticals and diet. We strongly believe that better understanding these connections will help drive further understanding and innovation with our customers.”
The metatranscriptomic services will generate a microbial community’s gene expression profile to inform customers about the interactions between an individual and their microbiome and will provide a holistic picture of a sample’s microbial functions and expression levels. Diversigen’s team of scientists has optimized extraction methods to ensure successful recovery of microbial mRNA, evaluated and confirmed reproducible library preparation and sequencing approaches, and created a curated database with more than 190,000 genomes, representing 31,000 species of microbes, to allow profiling of gene expressions, pathways, and functional categories not possible with metagenomics or amplicon sequencing.
Researchers in the pharmaceutical, biotechnical, academic, and consumer products fields are the anticipated customers for these new services.