Santa Clara, Calif.-based Affymetrix's new GeneChip® Human Genome U133 set is the first commercially available microarray set designed using the April 2001 draft of the human genome. Affymetrix incorporated 2.7 million source sequences in the array's design; the final product includes 45,000 probes in a two-array set representing 39,000 transcripts from 33,000 well-substantiated genes. "Each of the arrays in the set has over 500,000 individual oligonucleotide features," says marketing director Elizabeth Kerr. "That's huge, and it's something nobody else can do," she says.
Affymetrix's ability to put a lot of information on a single array stems from its photolithographic array production process. All of Affymetrix's GeneChip arrays are synthesized using photolithographic masks to direct light onto the surface of a wafer, and then synthesize oligonucleotide probes on the surface one base at a time.1 Thus, Affymetrix can synthesize a larger number of probes in a small...
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