Over the last few years microarray technology has become one of the principal platform technologies for high-throughput analyses of biological systems. Starting with the construction of first DNA microarrays in the 1990s, microarray technology has meanwhile flourished in the past decade and many different new formats have been developed. On-chip synthesis procedures have led to new ultra-throughput sequencing techniques, for example. Peptide and protein microarrays are now applied for the elucidation of interaction partners, modification sites and enzyme substrates. Antibody microarrays are envisaged to be of high importance for the high-throughput determination of protein abundances in translational profiling approaches. Now microarrays are also beginning to be used as a tool in synthetic biology. In addition, first cell microarrays have been constructed to transform microarray technology from an in vitro technology to an in vivo functional analysis tool. Although microarray technology is relatively simple conceptually, its practice does require careful planning and a detailed understanding of its inherent limitations. Without these considerations, it can be exceedingly difficult to derive valuable information from microarray data.
Therefore, the Status Seminar Chip Technologies aims to focus on key features of microarray technology, paying particular attention to current and future applications, experimental design, statistical methods, and potential uses. Furthermore, the status seminar will present important concepts and detail the steps necessary to conduct and interpret microarray experiments. All in all, this status seminar will highlight the versatility of microarray technology and provide a glimpse of what the future may hold.
Plenary lectures will be one highlight of this year’s conference. Stefan Schreiber, University of Kiel, will speak on “chip-based technology to discover the genetic etiology of complex diseases”. J. Craig Venter, The J. Craig Venter Institute, Rockville, MD/USA, has been invited to give a plenary lecture on high-throughput sequencing and functional analysis (to be confirmed).
The
poster prize
is awarded in recognition of an outstanding poster presentation. This time the Scientific Committee will select three posters for the award, each endowed with prize money of EUR 300.
Scientific Committee
Prof. Dr. T. Gress, Universitätsklinikum Marburg
Dr. J. Hoheisel, DKFZ, Heidelberg (Coordinator)
Dr. T. Joos, NMI, Reutlingen
Dr. A. Scriba, DECHEMA e.V., Frankfurt am Main