Micro-bead technology for the analysis of biomolecules

Abstract

Genomics and the genomics-based applications require technologies for high throughput analyses of biomolecules. Together with various technologies developed to date including DNA microarray and lab-on-achip, micro-bead technology is one of the key technologies for this purpose. The micro-bead technology have been successfully applied to the analysis of DNA and is thought to have great potential to be flexibly applied to the analyses of proteins, handling of which is much more difficult due to their diverse characteristics as compared to DNA. The micro-bead technology utilizes instruments and techniques developed for cytometry. Numbers of micro-beads with different biomolecules assigned by the fluorescence code are reacted in a single vessel. Then, the fluorescence from each micro-bead is analyzed by flow cytometry, image cytometry or so on. The micro-bead based technology allows multiplex analysis of various biomolecules. Further, it also allows automated analysis when paramagnetic beads are used. We have developed the technique for the preparation of fluorescently coded paramagnetic beads together with the instruments for the automatic operation. As the first example, we have applied our platform to the SNP typing. After the allele specific ligation, the products are captured on the fluorescently coded paramagnetic beads through sequence specific hybridization between the complimentary tags, one immobilized on the bead and the other connected to the SNP detection oligonucleotide. The paramagnetic beads are washed and allowed for the cytometry analysis. The recent progress of the micro-bead technology will realize more flexible, high throughput and cost effective analyses in genomics and medical inspection applications.