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。一条路径涉及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可以实现亚纳升体积的液体移液，并连续监测堵塞的尖端和其他操作状态。另一种途径是与Fred Hutchinson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，使用提议的压电移液系统：1)开发更强大的寡核苷酸或基于cDNA的微阵列平台，用于基因表达分析；2)完成基于cDNA微阵列的平台的开发，用于同时进行基因分型和基因表达监测；基于细胞功能的高通量DNA微阵列分析，将使在基因组尺度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、现场重现性和密度等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成为可能。该研究的最终目标是将这两种途径结合起来，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，该系统具有可靠性和性能，可用于癌症相关、基因组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.