What is a Bio-Microarray? How does it differ from an electronic chip?
What is a bio-microarray? Many may be interested in the differences and relationships between bio-microarrays and electronic chips. Electronic chips are integrated chips. Bio-microarrays are also integrated, but they are the integration of biological materials. Like the test tubes and other biological detection containers we commonly use in the laboratory, bio-microarrays condense these experiments into a small template. Bio-microarray refers to the orderly solidification of thousands of target molecules (such as DNA, RNA or protein) onto smaller supporters (such as glass, silicon, nylon film, etc.) in a certain way to form dense molecular arrays, and then hybridize the labeled samples with the target molecules on the supporters. After elution and laser scanning, the obtained signals are automatically analyzed by the computer. This method not only saves reagents and samples, but also saves a lot of manpower, material resources and time. It makes the detection more rapid, accurate and sensitive. It is the most efficient, sensitive and promising technology in biological detection. Simply put, a bio-microarray is to place biological samples on a piece of glass, silicon, nylon film and other materials, and then collect signals by an instrument and analyze data results by computer. It may be easy to connect bio-microarrays with electronic chips. In fact, bio-microarrays and electronic chips are inextricably linked, but they are totally different from each other.
Like laboratory tests, the detection of blood sugar, protein and enzyme activity on bio-microarrays is based on the same biological reaction principle. The microarray is just a carrier. What to do and what to test rely on biologists to complete. So bio-microarray is a carrier platform. There are many kinds of materials for this platform, such as silicon, glass, cellulose membrane, and some polymers with three-dimensional structure. The platform is densely packed with various biological materials. Bio-microarrays, like a chessboard, are arranged very neatly and regularly, with different biomaterials in each row, each point of which acts like a test tube, and reacts differently. In fact, bio-microarrays are not equivalent to electronic chips, but borrow concepts. The name of microarrays is because the reactions above them occur in crossed columns. That is to say, the reactions of many test tubes, which were originally required in a large laboratory, have now been moved to a single bio-microarray at the same time.
What's the difference between a bio-microarray and an electronic chip? The difference between the two is that the functions are different because the materials are used differently. Because the classification of bio-microarrays is based on the detection object, there are many different types. Bio-microarrays can be classified into gene microarrays, protein microarrays, tissue microarrays, and microfluidic chips according to the types of target molecules fixed on the supports. Gene microarray is mainly used for nucleic acid detection, DNA, RNA, small RNA and so on. Protein microarray is to put proteins on the detection template, such as antibodies, antigens, enzymes and other proteins, or to detect proteins.
The original intention of bio-microarrays came with human genome projects. The same thing about them is that they use very small components, store a lot of information, and have a lot of input and output. The so-called bio-microarray output is that on a square centimeter chip, the reaction signals of 1 million chemical molecules are scanned by a special scanner, line by line, and all the places as small as 0.5 micron are scanned, and none of the 1 million reactions will be missed. In the same way, bio-microarrays are made electronically using the technology of biomaterials. Bio-microarray is a powerful tool for studying pathology. With the growth of genomic data, bio-microarray technology has been widely used. In the fields of medical design, environmental protection, agriculture, public health, food safety detection, bio-microarray has many applications and has become a tool for the benefit of human beings. The most prominent use of bio-microarrays is disease detection. At present, the medical application of bio-microarrays mainly focuses on cancer and drug research. As a leading service provider in the field of bio-microarray, CD Genomics focuses on designing and developing various and effective bio-microarrays for scientific research and clinical applications. We offer a full range of Human DNA SNP Microarray and Human Transcriptome Microarray products and services to help our worldwide customers shorten the microarray designing time and lower the cost of research. With our proven competencies and regulatory expertise, we are therefore confident in designing, developing, testing, and manufacturing numerous RNA microarrays to suit your special needs in any biological and clinical projects.
Flow chart of bio-microarray
Fig. 1 Flow chart of bio-microarray
CD Genomics provides one-stop solutions for Bio-microarray services. With a large and well-equipped scientist team, we are dedicated to collaborating with researchers around the world to meet customer specifications. Our clients have direct access to our staff and prompt feedback to their inquiries. If you are interested in our services, please contact us for more details.
Our products and services are for research purposes ONLY. We do not perform any private testing services that are not for laboratory use.
