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| Microarrays |
Micro Array Technology
Also being developed in Gary Andersen's Molecular Microbial
Ecology Group is the PhyloChip. The PhyloChip is a microarray which is
designed to quickly probe for an extremely wide range of taxa within a given
sample. It speeds up the time it takes to get a record of the biological
diversity within a sample, from upwards of two weeks to a few days.
Secondly, the microarray allows the researcher to probe for upwards of 1012
sequences at once. Using conventional technology, the researcher would have
to sample 40,000+ genes in order to get a reproducible record of the biological
diversity present in a given sample.
A microarray is made in a fashion similar to a computer
chip with a grid of probes lain out in a specified pattern on its surface. The difference is that instead of electrical
signals being created to connect points, a 25mer
probe is built up at each of the 500,000+ grid
points. Each of these probes is designed to detect a specific 16S
rRNA sequence. In reality, it isn’t a single 25mer but
instead 107 copies of each 25mer created at each of the 500,000 spots. With such numbers, the microarray is able to
tell both which 25mers were activated – and therefore which different groups are
present, and also shows how many of each 25mer were activated. Hence, the microarray can tell the researcher
not only the biological diversity of a sample, but also the concentrations of
each taxonomic sequence.
Lab
Outline
Tutorial Main
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