ABSTRACT
Background and Introduction............................................................................... 282 Fostering Biological Knowledge: Cross-Discipline Data .................................... 284 Unifying the Biological (Data) World.................................................................. 285 The Legacy of Expression Arrays........................................................................ 285 Systems Biology — Driving Drug Development through Data Integration....... 286 Controls and Standards......................................................................................... 287 Biomarkers and the History of Genetics.............................................................. 288 SNP Detection ...................................................................................................... 289 Some Detection Technologies of Interest ............................................................ 291 NonSNP Technology: The Protein Chip, Microfluidics, and Assorted Engineering Marvels ...................................................................... 292 Microfluidics and Alternate Small-Scale Detection Devices............................... 297 Other Biomolecule Detection Methods................................................................ 299 SNP Detection: Major Commercial Technologies............................................... 300 SNP Detection Diversity ...................................................................................... 302 SNP Detection: Electronic Detection................................................................... 304 SNP Detection: Bead-Based................................................................................. 306 The SNP Chip: Flow-Through Methods.............................................................. 308 SNP Detection: Sequence-Based.......................................................................... 308 SNP Detection: Alternate Detection Methods ..................................................... 310 SNP Technology: Analysis Software ................................................................... 312 Discussion ............................................................................................................. 314 References............................................................................................................. 317
What drives the development of novel technological innovations in the biomedical field? What is the catalyst that makes researchers notice the lack of some ability or capacity? What is the fundamental element that fosters the inventive spirit? For example, the expression microarray answered a pressing need; observing expression of mRNA was difficult and time-consuming and was low density. Researchers wanted to know expression levels over the entire transcriptome for several different biological phenotypes but who first asked this question? Is the quest for new blockbuster drugs responsible for this tidal wave of biological data, or are we as scientists simply asking increasingly detailed questions that require much broader views of the cell?
