Shared Microarray Facility

描述（由申请人提供）： 该拨款申请建议将马萨诸塞州总医院微阵列设施的服务扩展到大波士顿社区内的研究人员，这些研究人员得到国家心肺血液研究所授予的赠款的支持。虽然微阵列分析开辟了同时探索大量基因相互作用的可能性，但成功执行这项工作的障碍是巨大的。微阵列分析的主要障碍之一是成本。鉴于必须重复测定以确保可重复性，这种成本使得典型的学术实验室很难（如果不是不可能的话）进行复杂的微阵列研究。通过使用由MGH寡核苷酸设施合成的寡核苷酸并排列我们自己的寡核苷酸，我们期望大幅降低这一成本障碍。阻碍微阵列工作进展的其他因素包括克隆/基因可用性和/或使用点样cDNA时的污染问题，缺乏探针或阵列再现性，以及在分析非常大的数据集时无法充分获得生物信息学专业知识。通过我们致力于使用点样寡核苷酸作为微阵列上的探针序列，克隆可用性和污染的问题应该得到解决。生物信息学以及生物解决方案的问题，阵列的再现性已在此授权申请。最后，随着几个领先的当地生物统计学家和生物信息学家作为合作研究者或顾问的招聘，MGH微阵列设施已经组装了必要的专业知识和努力，以促进合作研究者的能力，分析由微阵列技术产生的大数据集。这笔赠款的资源将专门用于支持波士顿地区主要教学医院和大学的NHLBI资助的广泛社区研究人员，包括许多以前没有机会使用这一重要但昂贵的研究工具的年轻研究人员。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This grant application proposes to expand and extend the services of the Massachusetts General Hospital Microarray Facility to investigators within the greater Boston community who are supported by grants awarded by the National Heart Lung Blood Institute. Although microarray analysis has opened up the potential to explore the interactions of large numbers of genes simultaneously, the obstacles to successful execution of this work are substantial. One of the chief hurdles to microarray analysis has been cost. Given the imperative to repeat assays in order to ensure reproducibility, this cost has made it difficult, if not impossible, for the typical academic lab to afford to conduct complex microarray studies. By using oligonucleotides synthesized by the MGH Oligonucleotide Facility and arraying our own oligos, we expect to lower substantially this cost barrier. Other factors that have impeded progress in microarray work have included problems with clone/gene availability and/or contamination when using spotted cDNAs, lack of probe or array reproducibility, and insufficient access to bioinformatics expertise in the analysis of very large data sets. Through our commitment to the use of spotted oligonucleotides as the probe sequences on microarrays, the issue of clone availability and contamination should be resolved. Bioinformatics as well as biological solutions to the problem of array reproducibility have been addressed in this grant application. Finally, with the recruitment of several leading local biostatisticians and bioinformaticians as co-investigators or consultants, the MGH Microarray Facility has assembled the requisite expertise and effort to facilitate a collaborating investigator's ability to analyze the large data sets generated by microarray techniques. The resources of this grant will be devoted to supporting the extensive community of NHLBI funded investigators at the major teaching hospitals and universities in the Boston area, including many younger investigators who have not previously had access to this important but costly research tool.