Affymetrix launched two new catalog GeneChip microarrays. The company this week rolled out the GeneChip Rat Genome 230 2.0 array and last week announced the Drosophila Genome 2.0 array.
The rat GeneChip consolidates into one chip data that previously was contained on a two-chip set. The new array contains some 30,000 transcripts, including 28,000 rat genes from the UniGene and the Baylor College of Medicine databases. Probe sequences and annotations are available through the company’s NetAffx online resource. The chip uses 22 probes to analyze each of the 30,000 transcripts on the array, the company said in a statement. The chips, part of the company’s next generation of microarrays, are only readable on the company’s GeneChip Scanner 3000.
The Drosophila chip is “largely based,” the company said, on the content from the recent annotation (release 3.1) of the Drosophila melanogaster genome by Flybase and the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project. Additionally, other published gene predictions from the Drosophila research community were included in the array. In this chip, 28 different probes are used to measure each of the 18,500 individual transcripts referenced by the design. Pricing details for the new catalog products were undisclosed.