The Microarray Biotechnology Center - Dr. Roderick Jensen who is physics professor at Wesleyan University leads our bioinformatics group. Dr. Ji-Liang Zhao and Aron Eklund work with Dr. Jensen to support the research teams in the lab involved with microarrays. Together they analyze the microarray data and develop automated tools for data mining based on the information gathered from the genes profiled.

The bioinformatics group's goal is to develop ways to process and validate data. The result of which will be the generation of a compendium of genetic and regulatory pathways in both the normal and disease state, thus, providing a snapshot of gene expression under different physiological states or conditions.

To support our Bioinformatics group we have Kenneth Auerbach. Ken is a theoretical physicist with a strong background in computer systems- software and hardware. He provides system support for all of the computers, servers and analysis tools for the lab and functions as both system administrator and network support. Aiding Ken is Greg Burakovsky. Greg is an independent contractor with our group. He has a background in computer science and electronics and has worked providing network and systems supports outside of academia.

The Microarray Biotechnology Center was established December of 2001 and originally operated with the Gene Array Technology Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Our center has expanded to operate independent of other facilities to reduce variables in sample handling, procedural differences and analysis. The facility is located at 65 Landsdowne Street in Cambridge and contributes to the effort of the HuGE Index database

The facility provides services to the local scientific communities at Harvard Medical School, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Additionally, the Center is part of a large consortium of NIDDK sponsored centers around the US and is utilized by a variety of national laboratories.

At our center, we utilize a variety of DNA microarray slides. These include Motorola, Affymetrix and in-house slides. Four our in house slides, we utilize the Standard Gene Set 96 (SGS96). The SGS96 represents 96 ubiquitous house keeping genes that are described in the HuGE index database. (Hsiao, et al.) A complete representative oligo set from Operon Technologies has been developed and tested. Our in house slides spot 70mer oligos pairs in triplicate for each gene. The oligo pair consists of a perfect match and a single mismatch located in the center of the control oligo. In addition to the SGS96, we have a set of 15,000 mouse cDNA clones from the National Institute of Aging that can be printed upon request. A set of 30,000 human cDNA clones from Research Genetics is also being tested but is not yet ready for use.

Dr. Jeff Randall, Mike Lombardi and Andrew Valeras run the Microarray Biotechnology Center. Dr. Randall is the Director of the center with a strong background in molecular and cellular biology and protein chemistry and a keen understanding of technology and protocol development. Mike has worked in the industry sector for over 15 years, managing and running a high-throughput sequencing facility. He is responsible for coordinating and facilitating the day-to-day operations of the center. Andy is a recent graduate from Boston College and a member of our lab for many years. Along with Mike and Jeff, he is responsible for printing, hybridizing and scanning of all chips and ensuring proper quality control.