 Finding The Best Microarray Scanner For Your Needs
Jul 2 '07
In today’s fast paced world we need information – lots of it and fast. If you need buckets of data regarding the expression of genes, you should think about microarrays. And for a successful microarray project, it is essential to choose the appropriate hardware, which mainly consists of an arrayer and a scanner. Scanners are used to read microarrays, and it is critical to choose a model which best fits your needs. Some of the important questions you should ask yourself before purchasing a microarray scanner are as follows: is this a chemiluminescent or a confocal system (if confocal, which wavelengths are utilized? do you need to use fluorophores other then classical Cy3 and Cy5? Do you want an upgradeable model?)? What is the resolution range? Can the data be compared with other commercial platforms? Don’t forget to also acquire information about scanner sensitivity and spot to background ratio. Are you planning to use a variety of microarrays now or later? Then make sure that your system is compatible with several microarray providers. Use of microarray technology can give you an enormous amount of information about expression of thousands of genes. As this technique is rather costly, it is very important to use appropriate microarray scanners.
Andrzej Pietrzykowski, MD, PhD
Instructor
University of Massachusetts Medical School
NOTE: Biocompare disclaims any information on this site. Price information is approximate list price and actual prices may vary.
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