Speakers

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Genes, chips and genomes

The Human Genome Project is providing life science researchers withaccess to unprecedented amounts of raw sequence data. To effectivelyharness this data and apply it to biomedical research, therapeutic devel-opment, clinical practice and patient management, powerful new toolsfor measuring gene expression, polymorphism discovery and genotyp-ing are needed. GeneChip probe arrays are powerful tools to meet theserequirements. Light-directed chemical synthesis is used to generateminiaturized, high-density arrays of oligonucleotide probes calledGeneChip probe arrays. Application-specific oligonucleotide arrayshave been used to rapidly scan known genes and discover genetic vari-ants, to detect the presence of known alternative alleles and to simulta-neously measure the expression of thousands of individual genes. Anintegrated GeneChip system including instrumentation and software hasbeen developed for array hybridization, fluorescent detection, and dataacquisition and analysis. Experiments demonstrating the effectivenessof these methods of genetic analysis will be decribed.

Robert J. Lipshutz, Ph.D.

Affymetrix3380 Central ExpresswaySanta Clara, California 95051USA

Dr. Lipshutz received his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, and his M.A.and A.B. from Harvard University, all in mathematics. Presently,he is Vice President of Corporate Development at Affymetrix, abiotechnology company developing DNA chip-based researchproducts for the genomics and clinical diagnostic markets. Priorto this position he was Director of bioinformatics and advancedtechnology. The genome informatics group is responsible forDNA chip design, data analysis, instrumentation software andsoftware product development. The advanced technology groupis developing miniaturized integrated nucleic acid analysisdevices under an ATP grant. His research at Affymetrix involvedcombinatorics, computer science, probability, statistics and com-puter modeling.

© 1999 Nature America Inc. • http://genetics.nature.com©

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