Microarray technology in obstetrics and gynecology: a guide for clinicians

Abstract

Microarrays can be constructed with dozens to millions of probes on their surface to allow high-throughput analyses of many biologic processes to be performed simultaneously on the same sample. Microarrays are now widely used for gene expression analysis, deoxyribonucleic acid resequencing, single-nucleotide polymorphism genotyping, and comparative genomic hybridization. Microarray technology is accelerating research in many fields and now microarrays are moving into clinical application. This review discusses the emerging role of microarrays in molecular diagnostics, pathogen detection, oncology, and pharmacogenomics.

Figure 1

DNA resequencing using oligonucleotide probes. A large number of probes can be synthesized to interrogate any particular base pair of a known sequence. In this schematic, 8 oligonucleotide probes are depicted: 4 are complementary to the sense strand and 4 complement the antisense strand. Each of the 4 probes in either set has a different base at the critical position. Only 2 of these 8 probes (the 2 probes outlined by a rectangle) will hybridize to the DNA sequence being tested. This particular hybridization pattern occurs only when the unknown sequence has the sequence represented in the diagram.

Figure 2

Comparative genomic hybridization on a microarray. The florescence ratios read off the array reflect whether chromosomal regions are deleted or duplicated in the test DNA sample.