MicroArray - Resources

A DNA microarray (also known as a DNA chip or gene chip) consists of a specially-treated microscope slide on which DNA molecules are printed in the form of tiny spots arranged in microscopic arrays; up to 25,000 per chip with the current state of the technology. With the availability of increasing numbers of completely sequenced genomes, it is now possible to make DNA microarrays in which spots represents all the genes of an organism.

The BRI is at the leading-edge of microarray technology. Cancer and infectious disease research, the detection of Escherichia coli in food and of pathogens in water are just a few examples of the numerous applications developed by the BRI team. Members of the Microarray Facility and of the Genetics group also took part in the annotation of the genome of Candida albicans and produced the first non-commercial Candida microarrays which are being used by researchers around the world to study this medically important fungal pathogen.

The Microarray Laboratory is also the organizer of the Montreal Microarray Symposium which is held annually at BRI.

The Microarray team
The Facility has 6 staff members responsible for day-to-day operation of the Facility. The group includes personnel assigned specifically to activities such as arraying, scanning and hybridizations; oligonucleotide synthesis; training and; bioinformatics and database administration.

Equipment and Facilities
The Microarray Facility is housed in a dedicated 2000 sq. ft. laboratory which includes state-of-the-art equipment:

• Two canadian-build DNA microarrayers (Bio-Rad) equipped with a 48-pin print-heads that uses "quill" pin technology (TeleChem / ArrayIt).
• Two ScanArray confocal fluorescent microarray scanners (PerkinElmer).
• Two MerMade high-throughput DNA synthesizers (BioAutomation Corporation; Texas) with a combined capacity to synthesize up to 700 20-mers oligonucleotides, daily.
• Three Expedite® DNA synthesizers.
• Two Beckman Biomek 2000 and a Biomek FX automated robotics workstations for liquid handling.
• An Agilent Bioanalyzer 2100 to assess the quality of RNA samples.