Microarray Technology and Applications: An All-Language Literature Survey Including Books and Patents

Abstract

The development and use of microarrays are expanding rapidly, making it difficult to find comprehensive sources of information about them. This all-language literature survey categorizes and lists papers, abstracts, reviews, books, and patents on the topic of microarrays, published up to the end of the year 2000. It has been compiled from searches of OVID Medline, INSPEC, Biosis, PubMed, and various patent databases (http://www.uspto.gov/; http://www.jpo.go.jp/; http://gb.espacenet.com/). The listing of references for each of the 11 sections can be found at Clinical Chemistry Online (www.clinchem.org/content/vol47/issue8/). A microarray is an analytical device that comprises an array of molecules (oligonucleotides, cDNAs, clones, PCR products, polypeptides, antibodies, and others) or tissue sections immobilized at discrete ordered or nonordered micrometer-to-millimeter-sized locations on the surface of a porous or nonporous insoluble solid support. These devices have been highly effective for the simultaneous detection of large numbers of analytes in a sample, and microarrays have quickly emerged as important analytical tools in many branches of the biological sciences. A microarray-based analytical strategy is quicker and more convenient than serial testing for each analyte, and it has been successfully applied to both immunoassays and DNA-based assays. The current scope of microarray applications includes sequencing by hybridization, resequencing, mutation detection, assessment of gene copy number, comparative genome hybridization, drug discovery, expression analysis, and immunoassay (protein microarrays). In addition, oligonucleotide microarrays have been used for a nonbiological application: computing. The task of compiling this survey has been complicated by the diverse and nonstandardized nomenclature for microarrays. Arrays have been named for their application (hybridization chip, high-density screening filters, genosensor), the identity of the arrayed molecules (cDNA library array, high-density gridded cDNA library, “printed circuit for proteins”, colony array, tissue array), the physical attributes of the array or the substrate on which the array is formed (matrix, two-dimensional …