Microarray technology is reshaping how biologists approach their experimental models. It is now possible to examine how the cell or tissue uses a repertoire of genes to control a biological process. It is their level of biological sophistication that the core proposes to provide for its users. Besides developing the ability to array genes on glass slides at high density using commercially available sets, the core will develop array sets appropriate for the skeletal biologist. Sources of RNA from human, murine and chicken skeletal tissue will be used to develop EST and full- length cDNA libraries using arrangements that take advantage of existing national and commercial for making plasmid libraries. The core will curate these ESTs to produce bone and cartilage focused gene sets that will contain genes that are currently not available in the public domain. The core staff will train users in how to perform an array hybridization, reading the slide and make the initial clustering on the resulting data. Novel and interesting genes identified through this process will be fully characterized at the primary sequence level using full-length cDNA libraries developed in the core. For those ESTs that are particularly important to a biological process, a rapid and automated quantitative PCR will be developed so that multiple samples can be analyzed for a limited number of genes. The short term goal is to get the members of the core to utilize the rapidly expanding technology in their current research programs with the expectation that this will lead to larger projects and supplemental finding. The long term goal is to build a public BoneArrayDB that documents the utility of the genes that are curated for our skeletal biology core group, to develop clustering methods that are appropriate for a skeletal biologists and to implement models that depict molecular, cellular and physiological pathways controlling the formation and maintenance of the skeleton.
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