DNA and Protein Microarrays and their Contributions to Proteomics and Genomics

Abstract

Knowledge in genomics and proteomics has exploded in the last two decades. This is in part due to key developments that have revolutionized the possibilities of bioanalytics such as the introduction of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in the mid 80s that formed the base for the massively parallel sequencing of the genomes.A few years ago DNA and protein microarray analysis were added to the toolbox of life sciences analytics. These technologies already proved to be ideal tools for the identification of gene targets, the simultaneous measurement of the expression of a high number of genes or proteins, and the increase of the level of understanding of the biological functions of genes and proteins. A small number of experiments are now sufficient to obtain information on gene or protein expression which could not be obtained by using conventional bioanalytical technologies or which required an extremely high experimental effort. In the future applications, high sensitivity DNA and protein microarrays will allow low abundant genes and proteins to be monitored that so far have been inaccessible to current microarray technologies and thus will generate a new dimension of genomic and proteomic information.