How Does Advanx Health Process My DNA

Your saliva sample will be processed in ISO17025-accredited laboratory in a renowned research institute in Malaysia. Our laboratory personnels are scientists that are trained in running the workflow with high stringency.

Your personalised reports are based on curated database of well-established, peer-reviewed publications. Your reports are also proof read by PhD scientists, and there will be citations in the report for all contents.

What happens to your saliva sample once it arrives at our lab?

1. The visual inspection

Your saliva sample is checked to see if it reaches the fill line and if there are any other contaminants that would mess with the genotyping process. Then, the barcode is scanned and this system is used to ensure your privacy and anonymity.

2. DNA Extraction

The saliva collection tube contains buffer solution, that stabilises your DNA and prevents your DNA from being damaged by the enzymes in your saliva.
The same stabiliser also contains a chemical that breaks open your cheek cells and white blood cells to release and purify your DNA.

3. Amplification

This step is done to copy or amplify the tiny amount of your DNA collected from the saliva collection tube, so that there are enough copies of it for genotyping.
To do this, a mixture of reagents are added to the DNA, and then incubated in a temperature-controlled oven overnight.

4. Cutting your DNA

Once we have enough copies of your DNA, we'll cut up your DNA into tiny little fragments.
Your whole DNA strand is enormous, and breaking them up into smaller pieces will ease the genotyping process.

5. Purification

So, now you have a tube filled with millions and millions of fragmented pieces of your DNA, we'll then have to purify the DNA by chemically precipitating the DNA into a solid mass that ends up at the bottom of the test tube.

6. Genotyping

Before we can scan the DNA for variations, we'll need to load and stain them on a genotyping chip.
The genotyping chip is a small rectangular piece of glass and it holds hundreds of thousands of probes. These probes are tiny man-made DNA strands that are made of A's, T's, C's and G's.
These probes are designed to detect and bind with your DNA strands, to detect DNA variations that are related to the traits that we want to look at. So, instead of looking at your entire DNA, we choose specific spots in your DNA to look at.

7. Staining

Once your DNA are bound to the chip, we then stain them with fluorescent red and green colours. These colours will determine which variants you have for a particular gene.

8. Translate into reports

At this point, all we see is a bunch of colours, so we'll need to decode the colours and translate them into readable data with the help of a computer program.
Your data will then be sent to the analysis team, where they'll find out what those colours mean, and generate the report of your traits.