OGT Services cherry-picks probes for microarrays
Mouse immune system genes

, den 05. Oktober 2005

Oxford/UK – Researchers at the William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford, have turned to Oxford-based Company OGT Services to help them optimize probes of interest prior to selecting them for a microarray-based project. The pro- ject focuses on the mouse immune system, specifically on about 768 genes at present, with a plan to double this number in the near future. As Dr Nigel Saunders, Lecturer in Microbiology at the William Dunn School of Pathology, explained, working with OGT made good experimental as well as good economic sense: “We wanted to take an informed approach to this work and so we designed up to five probes for every gene, which OGT synthesized using its on-slide synthesis methodology. We then tested the probes in three different hybridizations, compared their functional performances, and could modify them during the experiments according to our needs and according to how they performed. This information helped us to select the probes that we will use in-house with the microarray infrastructure we already have in place.” He points out that the most important point for choosing OGT was their flexibility and that he has complete access and control over his data with their solution.