ABSTRACT

Biochips and microarrays are technologies that benet directly from the research advances in micromanufacturing, nanotechnology, and the postsequencing era in genomics. Experimental genomics in combination with the growing body of sequence information promise to revolutionize the way cells and cellular processes are studied and diseases diagnosed and treated. Information on genomic sequence can be used experimentally with high-density DNA arrays that allow complex mixtures of RNA and DNA to be interrogated in a parallel and quantitative fashion. DNA arrays can be used for many dierent purposes, especially to measure levels of gene expression (messenger RNA [mRNA] abundance) for tens of thousands of genes simultaneously.1-4 On the other hand, portable,

3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................77 3.2 Biochips and Microarrays: Denition and Classication ............78