In 1996, Jeff Trent and colleagues published the first paper describing DNA microarrays as tools for pinpointing gene variants underlying various tumor properties.1 Now, as president and scientific director of Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN), in Phoenix, Trent is using microarrays to look for gene expression patterns that can be applied to developing diagnostics. The role of microarrays, Trent says, "will be on the discovery side. Testing all 30,000 genes against a diagnosti

In eukaryotic genetics, the one-gene/one-protein concept has, for the most part, breathed its last. Researchers have rallied behind mechanisms such as alternative splicing, which may allow a lowly 30,000-gene genome to produce the dizzying variety of proteins that some believe is necessary to produce beings as complex as humans. Alternative splicing--the post-transcriptional editing process that can result in various mRNAs--was previously seen as an interesting but relatively uncommon sidesh

A snapshot of the most highly ranked articles in microbiology and related areas, from Faculty of 1000

In the past few years a host of new instruments and tools (and even a few companies) have appeared for creating, imaging, and analyzing arrays. Below is a list of some of the companies that are active in this field, with the caveat that some new products and approaches may have inadvertently been missed.   The Expression Data Mining Tool (EDMT) is an intuitive query that sifts through large numbers of gene expression results and identifies those that meet selected criteria based on projects

A Living Legacy At the birthplace of stem cell research, the next generation of scientists continues to advance the field. By Megan Scudellari In Toronto’s downtown Discovery District, world-class stem cell researchers populate the buildings like athletes at the Olympics. On University Avenue, Andras Nagy, a renowned innovator in induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, works at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, housed within the towering Mount Sin

Medical institutions across the United States will begin recruiting volunteers next month for a study that its investigators and outside observers describe as groundbreaking. They say it is the first large-scale trial to test the feasibility of using DNA shed by tumors to find early-stage cancer. During the three-year government-funded project, researchers will analyze DNA from stool samples to detect patterns characteristic of colorectal cancer (CRC). The study will have two other notable fe