microarray - microarray chips (Jan/21/2004 )

I will work on cancer specific genes. I have to chose slides (microarray chips) for microarray. How do you chose the right slide?

What are cancer specific genes? Nowadays, most chips cover the whole genome with thousands of genes. What you need to choose is the type of arrays. There are two major types: cDNA microarray and oligo microarray. See the description below

Affymetrix oligo chip
The Human Genome U133 (HG-U133) Set, consisting of two GeneChip® arrays, contains almost 45,000 probe sets representing more than 39,000 transcripts derived from approximately 33,000 well-substantiated human genes. This set design uses sequences selected from GenBank®, dbEST, and RefSeq.

Agilent cDNA chip
For labs that demand high-quality, consistent results, this "ready-to-go" kit allows researchers to quickly screen over 12,000 expressed human sequences. Researchers can then obtain additional gene information and complete probe sequence information from the Incyte Genomic's LifeSeq?Gold Database. Now you can assay expression levels of some of the best characterized and most studied genes in one microarray!