title: Gene expression analysis with universal n-mer arrays.
abstract: Gene expression profiling is one of the many applications that have benefited from the massively parallel nucleic acid detection capability of DNA microarrays. Current expression arrays, however, are expensive and inflexible. They are custom-designed for each organism and they do not offer the possibility of incorporating updated genomic information without production of a new chip. One possible solution is the development of a universal chip, consisting of all 4n possible DNA sequences of length n. Studying different organisms or new genes would simply require modifications to the hybridization pattern analysis software. The key problem is to find a value of n that is large enough to afford sufficient specificity, yet is small enough for practical fabrication and readout. We developed an analytical model, supported by computer-assisted calculation with yeast and mouse transcript data, to argue that it is both practical and useful to fabricate n-mer arrays with 10 < or = n < or = 16.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
authors.forename: R Michael
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: van Dam
authors.forename: Stephen R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Quake
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing / Q000235:genetics; D000818:Animals; D020137:Base Pair Mismatch / Q000235:genetics; D004271:DNA, Fungal / Q000235:genetics; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D051379:Mice; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009692:Nucleic Acid Heteroduplexes / Q000235:genetics; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012331:RNA, Fungal / Q000235:genetics; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D004271:DNA, Fungal; D009692:Nucleic Acid Heteroduplexes; D012331:RNA, Fungal