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.
