Comparison to RNA-Seq
Several gene expression tools have been employed for more than two decades for thorough and comprehensive investigation of biological pathways and enhancing our understanding of diseases and their progression. Historically, qRT-PCR and microarrays were two of the most commonly used tools for gene expression analysis. The decreasing costs of next generation sequencing (NGS) over the past decade have resulted in the development and enhanced use of NGS methods to replace microarrays for assessing expression profiles of the transcriptome.
As a result, the commercially available NGS-based tools for gene expression analysis are now more abundant than ever. However, different tools are suited for different applications, and choosing the right option to answer your biological question is crucial. And, although costs for NGS have decreased, they often remain prohibitive for wide-spread adoption of NGS gene expression tools in large-scale studies, such as for drug development, or clinical practice. Similarly, bioinformatics analysis of NGS data is complex and often represents a significant or prohibitive use of time and resources.
TempO-Seq offers unique usability features that set it apart from other NGS-based methods and therefore make a wide range of applications more feasible, especially in large screening settings. In contrast to the majority of commonly used gene expression tools, TempO-Seq does not require RNA extraction, reverse transcription or preamplification.
TempO-Seq has been successfully applied in toxicology (large in vitro studies of thousands to tens of thousands of samples), single cell work, gene expression studies from FFPE tissue (for mech- anistic research, drug/target discovery, or diagnostics) or even whole organisms (zebrafish, drosophila, and daphnia), highlighting the wide applicability of this assay. TempO-Seq is being increasingly employed for drug discovery and development projects due to its many usability features.