About the Authors

Takeshi Hanami

Contributed equally to this work with: Takeshi Hanami, Diane Delobel

Affiliation Division of Genomic Technologies, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Diane Delobel

Contributed equally to this work with: Takeshi Hanami, Diane Delobel

Affiliation Division of Genomic Technologies, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Hajime Kanamori

Affiliation K.K. DNAFORM, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Yuki Tanaka

Affiliation Division of Genomic Technologies, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Yasumasa Kimura

Affiliation Division of Genomic Technologies, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Ayako Nakasone

Affiliation K.K. DNAFORM, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Takahiro Soma

Affiliation Division of Genomic Technologies, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Yoshihide Hayashizaki

Affiliation RIKEN Preventive Medicine and Diagnosis Innovation Program, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Kengo Usui

matthias.harbers@riken.jp (MH); kusui@gsc.riken.jp (KU)

Affiliations Division of Genomic Technologies, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan, RIKEN Preventive Medicine and Diagnosis Innovation Program, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Matthias Harbers

matthias.harbers@riken.jp (MH); kusui@gsc.riken.jp (KU)

Affiliations Division of Genomic Technologies, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan, K.K. DNAFORM, Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan

Competing Interests

HK, AN, and MH had been employees of K.K. DNAFORM, a company holding commercial rights to Eprimer and Eprobe technology. TH and TS are inventors of Japanese patent applications: Patent name: ”New fluorescent material for labeling biomolecules,” and number JP2012-091400 and patent name: ”Nucleic acid probe, design method of nucleic acid probe, and detection method for target sequence,” and number JP2012-158229. HK and YK are inventors of Japanese patent application patent name: ”Nucleic acid probe, design method of nucleic acid probe, and detection method for target sequence” and number JP2012-158229; YH is an inventor of patents name: ”Primer, primer set, and nucleic acid amplification method and mutation detection method using the same” and number JP2009-171935, and patent name: “Primer, primer set, and nucleic acid amplification method and mutation detection method using the same” and number US8067162, and pending patent applications name: “New fluorescent material for labeling biomolecules” and number JP2012-091400, and name: “Nucleic acid probe, design method of nucleic acid probe, and detection method for target sequence” and number JP2012-158229. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: TH DD KU YH MH. Performed the experiments: TH DD TS HK AN YT. Analyzed the data: TH DD MH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YK. Wrote the paper: MH.