Piezoelectric Pipetting Technology for DNA Analysis

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的研究遵循两个不同但互补的路径。一条途径是开发和测试新型压电移液、点胶、传感和外壳技术，并将其集成到全自动压电移液系统中。基于压电的创新技术能够移液亚纳升体积的流体并进行连续监测，以检测堵塞的吸头和其他操作状态。另一条途径是与弗雷德哈钦森癌症研究中心（F.H.C.R.C.）合作进行癌症相关的基因组学研究。使用所提出的压电移液系统来1）开发用于基因表达分析的更稳健的基于寡核苷酸或cDNA的微阵列平台，2）完成用于同时基因分型和基因表达监测的基于cDNA微阵列的平台的开发，以及3）开发新的，高通量DNA微阵列-基于细胞功能的测定，这将使得有可能在基因组规模上测定沉默特定基因的表型效应。一方面，分子生物学研究提供了一个真实世界的应用程序，以帮助集中设计的压电移液系统，并验证其性能。另一方面，该系统在可靠性、速度、实验设计灵活性、斑点再现性和密度方面提供了使能技术，使癌症基因组学和功能基因组学相关研究可行。拟议研究的最终目标是将这两条道路结合在一起，从而产生一个功能齐全且经过测试的通用、自动化、压电、流体移液系统，其可靠性和性能可用于癌症相关的基因组学和功能基因组学研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research follows two distinct yet complementary paths. One path involves developing and testing novel piezoelectric pipetting, dispensing, sensing and housing technology and integrating this into a fully automated piezoelectric pipetting system. Innovative piezoelectric-based technology enables pipetting of sub-nanoliter volumes of fluid and continuous monitoring to detect clogged tips and other operational states. The other path involves doing cancer-related genomics research in collaborative studies with the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (F.H.C.R.C.) to use the proposed piezoelectric pipetting system to 1) develop more robust oligonucleotide or cDNA-based microarray platforms for gene expression analyses, 2) complete the development of a cDNA microarray-based platform for simultaneous genotyping and gene expression monitoring and 3) develop novel, high-throughput DNA microarray-based assays of cellular function that will make it possible to assay phenotypic effects of silencing specific genes on a genomic scale. On the one hand, the molecular-biology research provides a real-world application to help focus the design of the piezoelectric pipetting system and validate its performance. On the other hand, the system provides the enabling technology in terms of reliability, speed, experiment design flexibility, spot reproducibility and density to make the cancer genomics and functional genomics related research feasible. The ultimate goal of the proposed research is to have the two paths come together, resulting in a fully functional and tested general-purpose, automated, piezoelectric, fluid pipetting system with the reliability and performance to empower cancer related, genomic and functional genomics research.