Gene chips

Gene Activity Profile Gene Array Gene Chip... 

Nurse Gene chips will probably answer this for us. 

Thus the study of surfaces has emerged as an important focus in the chemical sciences, and the relationship between surfaces of small systems and their performance has emerged as a major technological issue. Flow in microfluidic systems—for example, in micromechanical systems with potential problems of stiction (sticking and adhesion) and for chemistry on gene chips—depends on the properties of system surfaces. Complex heterogeneous phases with high surface areas—suspensions of colloids and liquid crystals—have developed substantial... 

Figure 4.2 Generalized outline of a gene chip. In this example, short oligonucleotide sequences are attached to the anchoring surface (only the outer rows are shown). Each probe displays a different nucleotide sequence, and the sequences used are usually based upon genome sequence information. The sequence of one such probe is shown as AGGCA. By incubating the chip with, for example, total cellular mRNA under appropriate conditions, any mRNA with a complementary sequence (UCCGU in the case of the probe sequence shown) will hybridize with the probes. In reality, probes will have longer sequences than the one shown above...

Paul But we can measure what has changed. In fact, one of the more modern approaches is to use gene chips or proteomics, to find out exactly which genes or proteins are being changed and what they do. I m not as pessimistic as you are. 

Fry The important thing with gene chips is that you need a hypothesis. If you get 36 000 dots then you don t know what they do. The advantage of having a pathological model is that there is a hypothesis to aim at. 

Wang J (2000) From DNA biosensors to gene chips. Nucleic Acid Res 28 3003-3010... 

Gene chip—Arrangement of small amounts of different genes on a small glass, plastic slide, or silicon chip used in genetic tests. 

Levels of RNA (usually specific mRNAs) in a cell can be measured by well-established techniques such as Northern blot analysis or by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis. However, the recent advent of DNA microarray technology has converted the identification and measurement of specific mRNAs (or other RNAs if required) into a high-throughput process. DNA arrays are also termed oligonucleotide arrays , gene chip arrays or simply, chips . 

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