Optimising future-proof microarrays for
pathogen research
Researchers at the Bacterial Microarray Group at St George’s (BµG@S), University of London, are switching over to OGT’s ink jet in situ synthesis (IJISS) technology for manufacturing whole-genome microarrays to a variety of pathogens, including C. jejuni and M. tuberculosis. The BµGS facility, funded by the Wellcome Trust, is involved in a number of academic collaborations and provides microarray facilities to hundreds of researchers across UK and Europe.
“We used to design and manufacture all of the BµGS microarrays ourselves,” said Dr Jason Hinds, Senior Scientist at BµGS. “However, we wanted to move forward and develop the next-generation arrays, so we set up a collaboration with OGT in order to improve the technology available and enhance the capacity to include new genome sequences rapidly in our microarray designs.”
“We’ve had a close working relationship with OGT; it started out as a commercial partnership several years ago when OGT put in matched funds to help us design and test a diagnostic array format for multiple pathogens, and the collaboration has grown over the years,” Jason continued. “We began with proof-of-concept studies, where OGT provided us with array designs to test out at St George’s, and then any issues or necessary modifications could be carried out before proceeding with a large-scale study. We are now optimising the arrays for the BµGS community platforms and in the future, OGT will manufacture them directly using its Agilent platform and IJISS technology. This will give us a lot more flexibility than our previous manufacturing methods as OGT’s technology makes it easy to customise an array, such as changing some of the oligonucleotides.
People often need to customise the arrays to answer their own research questions, using their own primer designs for example and, with OGT’s approach, we can test out the arrays and any modifications in a cost-effective manner.
We have developed IJISS arrays for Campylobacter and Mycobacterium tuberculosis pathogens to include all extra genes revealed by multi-genome sequencing projects with the potential to include any new gene or transcribed sequence on the array. This provides huge amounts of flexibility and makes them effectively future-proof. We couldn’t have done it without OGT!”