Increasing the Depth and Breadth of Coverage of Sequences on a Microarray

Microarrays are used as an investigative tool for answering questions concerning DNA sequence and structure, gene expression, and the location of protein binding targets. Although microarray systems are considered high-throughput compared to pre-existing technologies, they are currently limited by feature number that compromises tiling density, and ultimately, data quality. In addition, microarrays are expensive research tools. Even the cost of a simple experiment may be unaffordable to the average laboratory. In light of these issues, inventors at Johns Hopkins University have developed and successfully tested a method, termed ?multiple tiling?, to dramatically increase the depth and breadth of sequence coverage on an array without increasing cost. Multiple tiling is achieved through concatenation of smaller features of 30 nucleotides into full length 60 nucleotide molecules. Because the shorter features are derived from adjacent DNA segments in the genome, a fluorescent molecule binding one 30mer will bind more than one 30mer, illuminating at least two spots on the microarray. Because only one of the 30mers from each of these spots is contiguous, the investigator can determine which sequences have hybridized. In this way, twice the number of sequences can be interrogated on a given microarray. Description (Set) Proposed Use (Set) Companies in the microarray platform field can easily apply this new invention to existing tiling and transcriptional profiling arrays with no major modifications to current microarray technology. Multiple tiling arrays would afford more laboratories the opportunity to engage in microarray-based research thereby widening the consumer market for this product.

Inventor(s): Boeke, Jef D.

Type of Offer: Licensing



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