Piezoelectric Pipetting Technology for DNA Analysis

描述(由申请人提供)：拟议的研究遵循两条截然不同但相互补充的道路。一条途径是开发和测试新型的压电式移液、分配、传感和外壳技术，并将其集成到全自动压电式移液系统中。创新的压电式技术可实现亚纳升体积流体的移液和持续监测，以检测堵塞的尖端和其他操作状态。另一条途径是在与弗雷德·哈钦森癌症研究中心(F.H.C.R.C.)的合作研究中进行癌症相关基因组学研究。为了利用所提出的压电式移液系统，1)开发更强大的寡核苷酸或基于cDNA微阵列的基因表达分析平台，2)完成基于cDNA微阵列的同步基因分型和基因表达监测平台的开发，3)发展基于DNA微阵列的新型、高通量的细胞功能分析，这将使在基因组水平上分析沉默特定基因的表型效应成为可能。一方面，分子生物学的研究为压电移液系统的设计和性能验证提供了现实应用。另一方面，该系统在可靠性、速度、实验设计灵活性、斑点重复性和密度等方面提供了使能技术，使肿瘤基因组学和功能基因组学的相关研究成为可能。拟议研究的最终目标是将这两条途径结合在一起，产生一个功能齐全并经过测试的通用、自动化、压电、流体移液系统，具有可靠性和性能，以支持与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.