Overview
The separation of nucleic acids is a necessary precursor to a wide range of life science research and diagnostic techniques. Familiar methods such as cloning/subcloning and Southern and Northern blotting frequently rely on the electrophoretic separation of nucleic acid fragments generated by amplification or restriction digestion. Recently emerging methods such as gene silencing and miRNA analyses often hinge on the separation and sizing of short polynucleotides isolated from cell or tissue samples or synthesized in vitro. For some techniques, such as mutation detection or STR analysis, resolution in the range of a few bases may be required. For other methods, like standard cloning or Southern blotting, a resolution in the tens to hundreds of bases may suffice.

Percepta’s 2008 Nucleic Acid Separation Dashboard™ dives deeply into the characteristics of the market for nucleic acid separation products. This Dashboard reveals key market indicators for the nucleic acids separations market as a whole as well as for the following sub-segments:

• Analysis of amplified DNA (includes AFLP)
• Analysis of restriction digested DNA (includes RFLP)
• Analysis of cRNA or total RNA quality
• Analysis of small RNA molecules
• Analysis of synthetic DNA or RNA
• STR analysis
• HLA typing analysis
• Pulsed field gel electrophoresis (includes mapping)
• Mutation detection (includes SSCP, DGGE)

Survey Methodology
In August of 2008, Percepta fielded the 23-question Nucleic Acid Separation Survey to a subset of the company’s panel of life scientists. Individuals were invited by e-mail to click through to a webpage at bioanalytix.com where the survey was hosted. Invitations were delivered on August 19, 2008 and results collected through August 26th. A total of 548 scientists completed the survey, of which 526 are actively engaged in performing nucleic acid separation and 8 plan to perform nucleic acid separation in the next 12 months. Results based on the aggregate of collected responses are revealed in this Nucleic Acid Separation Life Science Dashboard™.

Respondent Demographics
Respondents from the academic, government and commercial market segments are well represented, with 13.6% of respondents employed in an industry setting. 72.5% of respondents are from North America, while 24.8% reside in Europe.

Junior (Lab Tech, Grad Students), mid level (Post-Doc, Lab Manager) and senior (Professor/PI, Group Leader) scientists are well represented in the data set, with the most cited job titles being Professor/Principal Investigator (19.2% of respondents), Scientist/Senior Scientist (17.3% of respondents) and Post-Doctoral Fellow (14.6%).

A wide variety of scientific areas of specialization is also evident, led by Molecular Biology (named by 34.9% of respondents as their primary area of expertise) and Microbiology/Infectious Disease/Virology (named by 9.9% of respondents). Biochemistry (9.7%), Genetics (8.6%), and Cell Biology (7.3%) are the only other primary areas of specialization named by more than 6% of respondents.

Small (1-5 scientists), medium (6-20 scientists) and large (>20 scientists) laboratories are well represented: 39.6% of respondents work in labs where 1 to 5 people perform experiments; 47.1% in labs with 6 to 20, and the remaining 13.3% in labs with greater than 20 bench scientists.