1. The State of Microarrays The Scientist: 2003 By: Hien Dang

2. A new “fab” Microarrays – What is Microarray? – Microarray’s applications – Great Challenges – Everyone is doing it… why not you?

3. Microarrays… what is it? Takes an array of orderly arrangement of samples with thousands of florescent spots that provides researchers information on thousands of genes simultaneously A “fab” that’s going on today.. – Involves fast progress of collecting data – Used for genomic research as well as many others(proteomics, ecology,etc.)

4. Applications… For DNA microarray… – 1. Identification of sequence(gene/gene mutation) – 2. Determination of expression level(abundance of genes)

5. Applications… Protein Arrays – Protein-to-protein interactions – profiling antibody binding and specificity

6. Microarrays… Accepted by many rapidly, technical challenges remain – 1. Universal Standardization Language – 2. Data noise – 3. Technological difficulties: Computers and biologists don’t mix too well… – 2. Probe length on specificity of oligo Longer better, but cost more…

7. Universal Standardization Language Challenge: How do we understand global microarray if its written in different languages? Temporary Answer: MIAME(Minimal Information About a Microarray Experiment) adopted by MGEDS

8. Universal Standardization Language Conditional solution to standardization issue For universal interpretation of data analysis However, not everyone has adopted this language

9. Data Noise Challenge: Problem persists base upon either good or bad microarrays Cross-hybridization and significant use of RNA during amplification contribute to data noise Temporary Answer: None… Perhaps better methods?

10. Computer Scientists vs. Biologist Challenge: Great amount of data, where to store? How to analyze? What to do with it? How to share?

11. Computer Scientists vs. Biologist Temporary Answer: GeneSifter.Net. – Accessible to everyone. Cost? Free. Uses World Wide Web to. – Easy to use. – Cheap. Easy.Excess anywhere. what more do you want?

12. Probe Length Challenge: Affects of probe length on the specificity of oligo microarrays generated Temporary Answer: Amersham Biosciences: A new Array that eliminates hybridization problems. – Putting oligo into a 3-D matrix using only a 30mer sequence. Cheap Affymetrix: 25-30mer put directly on chip using comibatorial chemistry and photolithography

13. Everyone’s doing it… The most rapid technology used in molecular research today. Costs are high, however efficient. Many challenges yet to master. Fast data, beats traditional work.

14. Not really… Many are skeptical about this new technology “limited.. Results are hard to handle and interpret” Results hard to understand Just because you have result doesn’t mean you know what it is Blind researchers of an objective: A strong hypothesis just because everyone is doing it, I’m doing it too…

15. Conclusion The Scientist explores many areas of microarrays and allows the research community to see the good, bad and challenges of microarrays. How will this technology affect you? Just about in every aspect. This is a “revolution” of research.

16. The Scientist 2003