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  • What is Xenium?

    What is Xenium?

    The 10X Genomics Xenium Analyzer will support true single cell spatial transcriptomics on fresh frozen or fixed tissue samples. You can characterize 100s to 1000s of RNAs in cells and tissues using customizable pre-designed or fully custom gene panels. The Xenium uses a high sensitivity, padlock probe rolling circle amplification (RCA) technology to quantify mRNAs in single cells within tissues. This technology supports high sensitivity detection of transcripts across a range of expression levels, including rare transcripts. The methodology can be used to detect short/highly degraded transcripts (as commonly seen after tissue fixation) and can distinguish between closely related transcripts (e.g. isoforms of genes). Tissue samples are arrayed on Xenium slides (2 slides/run with 12 x 24 mm imageable area/slide). Validated gene probes are selected (custom and off the shelf containing gene specific barcodes, can use 50-5000 probe sets/run); hybridized to the slide, ligated and amplified using RCA. The slide is loaded into the Xenium analyzer where the amplified products are detected through successive rounds of fluorescent probe hybridization that take 2 days to complete. An optical signature specific for each gene is generated and then spatially mapped to the transcripts across the tissue section. The Xenium data can be visualized using freely available “explorer” tools that allow for run QC as well as simple exploration of the datasets. 

    For more information concerning the Xenium’s abilities and innovations please click here.