Microarrays

Manufacture and analysis of Microarrays

• Technology based on the hybridization of DNA that allows analyzing a whole genome in a single experiment.
  Traditional methodology       One gene = One experiment
  New technology                One genome = One experiment
• Hundreds or thousands of DNA molecules, normally with known sequence, ordered onto a solid support.
• The dimensions of DNA drops must be small, 200 µm as much.
•  Names: biochip, DNAchip, gene array, gene chip, genome chip.

• Process

1) Creation of the microarray using a robot that prints the DNA probes
2) Hybridization with the target DNA labelled using fluoresecent dyes (fluorochromes)
3) Scanning
4) Data interpretation

DEVICE

ACTIVITY

CONDITIONS

MicroGrid II (BioRobotics)

Manufacture of microarrays

Spotting up to 100 slides simultaneously.
Automatically handling up to 24 plates multi-well (>9000 samples)
Generation of microarrays with more than 30000 genes.

Generation of microarrays that contains the genome of the yeast S. cerevisiae

The SGB routinely generates microarrays that contain the whole genome of the yeast S. cerevisiae. Probes are double-strain DNA fragments, onto a derivatized-amino support (UltraGaps, Corning).

Thermocycler,PCR
LabChip 2100 BioAnalyzer (Agilent Technologies).

Synthesis and labelling of cDNAs

The SGB can carry out synthesis reactions and labelling of cDNAs from RNA samples provided by the user.
This includes the measurement of concentration and quality of RNA

NANODROP

Quality control of RNA

Measurement of concentration and quality of RNA

ArrayBooster (Advalytix).

Hybridization of microarrays

The user provides the microarrays (dimensions of a standard slide)

ScanArray 4000 and ScanArray  Gx Plus (Perkin Elmer)

Scanning of microarrays

Scanner equipped with two lasers and a specific software for the generation of data (ScanArray)

(QuantArray
ScanExpress
GenePix)

Generation of data

We offer the possibility of generating data using two different softwares (QuantArray/ScanExpress and GenePix). Results are an Excel file and the images of the microarrays.