Neuroscience Microarray Consortium Installs Affy and Illumina Array...

Neuroscience Microarray Consortium Installs Affy and Illumina Array Tools at Yale, TGen

A National Institutes of Health-led group of research facilities has installed Illumina and Affymetrix array tools to support collaborative neuroscience whole genome association studies, the group said Wednesday.

The group, Neuroscience Microarray Consortium, has centers at the University of California, Los Angeles, Duke University, Yale University, and is based out of the Translational Genomics Research Institute Phoenix, Ariz.

 

"[T]hese high-throughput genotyping services will ultimately make a dramatic impact in clinical care of neurological disorders," NMC chairman and TGen neurogenomics director Dietrich Stephan said in a statement.

 

Stephan told GenomeWeb Daily News that the NMC is working with roughly $25 million in NIH funding. He said the group bought an Illumina BeadLab 1,000 in late 2006, and that the system is "up and running" at Yale, and that TGen's lab in Phoenix is running an Affy Human Mapping 500K Array Set.

 

As many as 10,000 researchers will have access to the hardware for whole-genome studies, particularly researchers studying genes linked to neurological disorders.

 

The consortium member institutions each offer different services, the NMC said: TGen offers expression profiling and SNP-genotyping using Affy's Gene Chips; Yale offers genotyping using both Affy and Illumina services; UCLA uses the Affy platform; and Duke contributes LCM services.

 

Yale scientist Shirkant Mane said the addition of the Illumina platform "will significantly aid the research goals of the neuroscientist."

 

Additional information about the NMC can be found here.

 

Source from GenomeWed Daily News