Nucleic acid microarrays applications

While it is true that microarray technology is gearing up for proteomics, it is perhaps still too early to predict what role microarrays will ultimately play. Proteins are much more complex molecules than nucleic acids and the suggestion has been made that additional tools and approaches will be needed. Microfluidic devices (electrophoresis, flow cytometry) with miniaturized detectors may also be applicable. 

Plastic substrates are now utilized for both nucleic acid and protein microarrays. In particular, plastic microarrays have been introduced for high-throughput applications based upon the microtiter plate which is the standard automation platform. 

This chapter will review some of the key applications presented by protein microarrays. The use of profein microarrays sfems from works on gene expression arrays described earlier. However, rmlike ifs predecessors whose process formats (mutation detection, polymorphism screening, gene expression analysis, etc.) are essentially based upon solid-phase hybridization of nucleic acid complementary strands, the protein array may play different roles and comprise a variety of formafs. 

Reed MR, Coty WA. eSensor a microarray technology based on electrochemical detection of nucleic acids and its application to cystic fibrosis carrier screening, in microarrays preparation, detection methods, data analysis, and applications. In Dill K, Liu R, Grodzinski P, editors. Kluwer Springer-Verlag 2008 in press. 

Ramakrishnan R, Dorris D, Lublinsky A, Nguyen A, Domanus M, Prokhorova A, Gieser L, Touma E, Lockner R, Tata M, Zhu X, Patterson M, Shippy R, Sendera TJ, Mazumder A. 2002. An assessment of Motorola CodeLink microarray performance for gene expression profiling applications. Nucleic Acids Res 30 e30. 

SBH analysis of a single complex nucleic acid sample may require tens of thousands of individual probe-DNA hybridizations. Such massively parallel experiments are ideally suited to microarray applications in which oligonucleotide probes bound to a solid support are exposed to DNA samples alone or in combination with nucleotide bases or additional probes in solution (see below). Probe... 

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