Utilization of a labeled tracking oligonucleotide for visualization and quality control of spotted 70-mer arrays

Abstract

Abstract Background Spotted 70-mer oligonucleotide arrays offer potentially greater specificity and an alternative to expensive cDNA library maintenance and amplification. Since microarray fabrication is a considerable source of data variance, we previously directly tagged cDNA probes with a third fluorophore for prehybridization quality control. Fluorescently modifying oligonucleotide sets is cost prohibitive, therefore, a co-spotted Staphylococcus aureus-specific fluorescein-labeled "tracking" oligonucleotide is described to monitor fabrication variables of a Mycobacterium tuberculosis oligonucleotide microarray. Results Significantly (p M. tuberculosis H37Rv and M. tuberculosis mprA. Linearity between the mean log Cy3/Cy5 ratios of genes differentially expressed from arrays either possessing or lacking the tracking oligonucleotide was observed (R2 = 0.90, p Conclusions This novel approach enables prehybridization array visualization for spotted oligonucleotide arrays and sets the stage for more sophisticated slide qualification and data filtering applications.

Keywords

• Spotted oligonucleotide arrays
• 70-mers
• gene expression analysis