The Power of Microarrays—Robotic Technology Meets Biochemistry

The Power of Microarrays—Robotic Technology Meets Biochemistry 

In Step 5, the chip is scanned and a computer analyzes the fluorescence. The results appear as a series of colored dots. A red dot indicates a DNA sequence on the chip that bound to the cDNA from the treated cells. This indicates an mRNA that was being expressed in treated cells. A green dot indicates RNA produced in untreated but not treated cells. A yellow dot would indicate a mRNA that was produced equally well in treated or untreated cells. Black spaces indicate DNA sequences on the chip for which no mRNA was produced in either situation. To answer the question about whether the potential drug is toxic to liver cells, the results from the microarray would be compared to controls run with liver cells and drugs known to be toxic versus those known to be nontoxic, as shown in Step 6. 

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