Microarray chips

However, in addition to its low production costs and excellent gas analytical features, the gradient microarray chip offers further advantages over the classical arrays consisting of separate gas sensors of different chemistry. Since all sensor ele-... 

Harvey, M.A., Nitrocellulose surfaces for quantitative protein microarrays, Chips-to-Hits Conference, fritemational Business Communications, Boston, October 2003. 

The state of the microarray-selected suppliers of microarray chips, spotters, and readers. The Scientist, 17(3), 40, 2003. 

Alternative microarray approaches are available that involve the 3 tailing of the miRNA molecule with poly(A), followed by labeling and hybridization. The NCode miRNA microarray platform (Life Technologies) involves the addition of the poly(A) tail to the miRNA prior to ligation of fluorescent dye molecules and subsequent hybridization to the antisense miRNA probes on the microarray chip. In the case of Affymetrix GeneChip microRNA arrays, the poly(A)-tailed miRNAs are labeled with a biotinylated signal molecule. A limitation of hybridization-based microarrays is that because of the small size of miRNAs, the Tm of the probes has a wide range that may diminish specificity and/or sensitivity for miRNAs with a low GC content (10,56). 

In this line, successful examples of transcriptome analysis are based on recently developed microarray chips covering the genome of important crop species such as watermelon, citrus, melon, canola, etc (51,52). 

Pedrosa E, Locker J, Lachman HM. 2009. Survey of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder candidate genes using chromatin immunoprecipitation and tiled microarrays (chip-chip). J. Neurogenetics 23 1-12. 

Since microarrays are simply spots of DNA arrayed in a known pattern, they also can be used for DNA-DNA hybridization studies. This is the basis for using micro-arrays for comparative DNA hybridizations, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) discovery, and chromatin immunoprecipiation followed by microarray chip hybridization (ChIP on chip analyses) to identify transcription factor binding sites (discussed below). 

In 2004, the FDA approved a microarray chip designed to routinely identify polymorphisms of drug-metabolizing enzymes related to cytochrome P450 drug metabolism. 

As we have previously outlined, histones are small nuclear proteins that contribute to pack the DNA within nucleosomes (7,33). Histones are subject to a number of covalent post-translational modifications that collectively influence chromatin remodeling and gene expression. The question now is how to build genome-wide histone-maps. The answer came recently thanks to the combination of ChIP followed by either microarrays (ChIP-chip) or sequencing methods (ChIP-Seq) (31). 

Bearing in mind SPR-featured characteristics, it is becoming increasingly relevant in biomedical research, for example, in antibody screening, implementation of cancer diagnosis, or label-free detection of small molecules on a microarray chip. 

---