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14/06/2005

Gene Bridges And Covalys To Develop Restriction-Enzyme-Free SNAP-tag Gene Fusion Kits

Witterswil, Switzerland and Heidelberg, Germany – Gene Bridges and Covalys Biosciences AG today announced a collaboration to develop copy-paste DNA engineering kits to generate SNAP-tag fusion proteins based on Gene Bridges’ Red/ET Recombineering technology. Gene Bridge’s Red/ET cloning system does not require restriction enzymes and allows engineering large DNA sequences with single-nucleotide precision. SNAP-tag is an intelligent self-labeling protein tag which covalently links chemical probes to proteins of interest without prior purification.

The combined products will allow scientists to easily add the SNAP-tag gene onto any cloned gene, at any position, so that the SNAP-tag can be used to study protein function and interaction. The cloning kits will be particularly useful for cloning with BACs (bacterial artificial chromosomes) and other large vectors for use in transgenic expression studies. Covalys already offers a broad range of kits for the subsequent labeling of SNAP-tag fusion proteins in live cells and in vitro with fluorescent or affinity probes. Kits to be introduced later this year by Covalys will allow for immobilization without prior purification, and purification of SNAP-tag fusion proteins.

We are particularly happy about this collaboration said Christoph Bieri, Covalys’ CEO. The new cloning kits will give scientists an easy avenue to fuse proteins encoded by large genes to SNAP-tag. It’s an exciting new extension of the application of our technology, and we are convinced that the cloning kits will be enthusiastically welcomed by scientists working with BAC resources.

Prof. A. Francis Stewart, Chairman of Gene Bridges, said, BACs are the new treasures of molecular biology. Most online genomes are annotated with readily available BACs, so that it is easy to identify and obtain a BAC encoding a gene of interest. The new SNAP-tag kits will combine the inherent advantages of BACs with the power of SNAP-tag for protein expression studies.

The cloning kits, which will contain validated reference BAC, and substrate for functional testing of the SNAP-tag in the fusion protein, are expected to be on the market in Q3/2005. The cloning kits will be developed and distributed by Gene Bridges, and the labeling kits for SNAP-tag fusion proteins as well as SNAP-tag cDNA are available through Covalys and its distributors.