Free Lunchtime Workshop
1:00pm-2:00pm, 6 August 2009
Inkjet Microarray Printing: Genomics and Proteomics “On the Fly”
Speaker: Neil Winegarden, Head of Operations, Microarray Centre, University Health Network, Toronto, Canada
Microarray technology has come a long way from its humble beginnings in the early 1990’s: once a tool for the multiplex profiling of gene expression, microarrays have evolved into a platform for almost any high throughput screening application.
Early microarrayers utilised either solid pins or split pins in order to deposit small volumes of DNA or protein onto a glass substrate. Despite the robustness, accuracy and relatively high throughput capability of these machines, they suffer from several limitations which have somewhat stalled the development of novel array based applications.
Enter the new era of printing methodologies – inkjet or “non-contact” printing. There have been several attempts to match inkjetting to array printing but most of the resultant microarrayers were more suited to strict development and lacked the power of a production scale platform. The Arrayjet Super Marathon Inkjet Microarrayer (part of a range of inkjet microarrayers that use a common, core technology to produce high quality microarrays at various levels of throughput) combines a high degree of flexibility with ease of use, robustness and production level capability. Here, we will present several unique array-based technologies and assays that we are developing that have only been possible due to our acquisition of the Arrayjet microarrayer. Assays such as antibody screening, antibody array production, and cell patterning will be presented and discussed.
