DNA Diagnostic Chip Featured on Cover of Genome Technology Magazine

Summary

Featured on the cover of the March 2006 issue of the Genome Technology magazine is a DNA diagnostic chip used to display as color patterns, the numerous gene amplifications and deletions in cancerous tissues. The changes thus catalogued are a starting point for exploring devising possible cancer interventions. Each of the several thousand component pixels has DNA representing a short segment of the human genome. As a gene ordered array, the chip represents the human genome as its constituent chromosomes in overlapping segments of about 50,000 DNA subunits lengths. DOE sponsored resource and technology development contributed pivotally to this type of diagnostic capability. The DNAs are derived from Bacterial Artificial Chromosomes (BACs), with construction pioneered by the M. Simon team at Caltech. Under the now completed Human Genome Program, the prevalent resources for genome mapping and sequencing were the Caltech BAC libraries, with later complementation by libraries produced by the P. de Jong team now at the Oakland Children’s Hospital. The genome scale DNA end sequencing with concomitant mapping of the BACs is related at (website below). It was critical to the strategies of the international public HGP collaboration and the private Celera Genomics Inc effort. The HGP was finished both within the projected time and budget. The strategy for displaying deleted or amplified sections of chromosome as simple color changes was pioneered by Joe Gray and Dan Pinkel, at UC San Francisco and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. These resources and capabilities together have fostered commercial production of several competing whole genome survey chips. The feature figure can be accessed through http://medphoto.wellcome.ac.uk as image B0005446.