Zebrafish and chips

Affymetrix has announced the availability of its new GeneChip Zebrafish genome array and Xenopus laevis genome array, which were designed in collaboration with representative members of the Zebrafish and Xenopus laevis research communities and the US National Institutes of Health.

The new arrays are said to deliver the most up-to-date view of the Zebrafish and Xenopus laevis genomes.

Both organisms are used extensively for developmental studies.

The Xenopus laevis genome array is described as the most comprehensive Xenopus laevis expression array commercially available, featuring over 14,400 transcripts.

The sequences on the array are drawn from the 2003 drafts of public data sources including GenBank, Dbest and UniGene.

The Zebrafish genome array can be used to study expression of over 14,900 Zebrafish transcripts and is based on the recent 2003 updates to the publicly available RefSeq, GenBank, Dbest and UniGene databases. "We have collected preliminary data from the Zebrafish array and we are pleased with the array performance," said Leonard Zon of Children's Hospital/Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Boston, USA.

"The Zebrafish array will be an essential tool for our upcoming research".

"It is exciting that GeneChip arrays are now available for these two important developmental biology model organisms," said Lianne McLean, director, gene expression marketing, Affymetrix.

"We worked closely with the Xenopus laevis and Zebrafish research communities to ensure that all of the sequence information used to create these arrays was available in the public databases and that it met their needs".

One of the benefits of Affymetrix technology is that it enables research groups, such as the barley and Arabidopsis communities, to standardise their expression results on a single platform.

This helps ensure consistent and reproducible array results and facilitates data sharing around the world.