© Robert Kyllo
Richard Houlston works at the Institute of Cancer Research in Sutton, UK, where he searches for genes that confer susceptibility to disease. Until recently, Houlston mapped microsatellite markers within families. But he is switching to single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping using the Affymetrix 10K SNP array, because, says Houlston, there is less room for interpretative error. It is also faster: whereas previously, his team might have processed 150 families in nine months, with one Affymetrix scanner in-house Houlston can complete a similar size study in 15 weeks.
If you've been thinking about doing some genotyping work of your own but don't know how to get started, there are five questions you should answer before deciding on a platform.
Each platform caters to different SNP counts and throughputs. For 10 or fewer SNPs and sample numbers in the thousands, the current gold standard is Applied Biosystems' TaqMan real-time ...
