The State of the Microarray

Graphic: Bob Crimi, Reprinted with permission from Nature Genetics, 32:465-66, Dec. 2002

By all accounts the genomics research community has embraced nucleic acid microarrays. San Jose, Calif.-based growth consulting firm Frost & Sullivan estimates that the market will grow at an annual compounded growth rate of 63% between 1999 and 2004--from $232 million (US) to $2.6 billion.¹ Revenue for related equipment such as arrayers and scanners topped the $500 million mark in 2002, says Frost & Sullivan, and is projected to grow to almost $2 billion by 2008.²

Some credit for this revolution must go to the tools' manufacturers, who seem to have a knack for giving their customers exactly what they want, whether it be chip sets representing every gene in the human genome, or arrays limited to genes in the p53 signaling pathway. Now, arrays exist to study individual model organisms, pathways, and gene families;...