DNA CHIPS - ANALYZING SEQUENCE BY HYBRIDIZATION TO OLIGONUCLEOTIDES ON A LARGE-SCALE

Complete sequences of genomes and comprehensive sets of cDNA sequences open tbe way to a huge range of biological problems. There is a need for analytical methods that can deal with the large numbers of sequenc es in the data banks and, ideally, we would like to analyse all sequen ces together. Gel-based sequencing is a serial process that analyses o ne sequence ata time. Oligonucleotide arrays, or 'DNA chips', are mini ature, parallel analytical devices, which could bring to sequence anal ysis and molecular genetics many of the advantages that semiconductor devices brought to computing.