7/01/2008 PERMALINK
DNA microarray allows for personalized medicine The dream of personalized medicine — in which diagnostics, risk predictions and treatment decisions are based on a patient's genetic profile — could soon be widely available. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) Physical Biosciences Division has invented a technique in which DNA or RNA assays — the key to genetic profiling and disease detection — can be read and evaluated without the need of elaborate chemical labeling or sophisticated instrumentation. Based on electrostatic repulsion — in which objects with the same electrical charge repel one another — the technique is relatively simple and inexpensive to implement, and can be carried out in a matter of minutes.

"One of the most amazing things about our electrostatic detection method is that it requires nothing more than the naked eye to read out results that currently require chemical labeling and confocal laser scanners," said Jay Groves who led this research. Groves and members of his research group Nathan Clack and Khalid Salaita, have published a paper on their technique in the journal Nature Biotechnology, which is now available online. The paper is entitled Electrostatic readout of DNA microarrays with charged microspheres describes how dispersing a fluid containing thousands of electrically-charged microscopic beads or spheres made of silica (glass) across the surface of a DNA microarray and then observing the Brownian motion of the spheres provides measurements of the electrical charges of the DNA molecules. These measurements can in turn be used to interrogate millions of DNA sequences at a time. What's more, these measurements can be observed and recorded with a simple hand-held imaging device — even a cell phone camera will do ... more