Canon of Tokyo has received US Patent No. 7,993,605, "Process for producing probe carrier and apparatus thereof." A production apparatus, for producing a probe array, comprises a liquid discharging device for discharging a liquid containing a probe capable of being specifically bonded to a target substance in order to form a spot on the carrier, a detector for determining whether the spot is formed by observing a surface state on the carrier, and a controller for controlling the liquid discharge device to again discharge the liquid to form the spot on the carrier if the detector detects that the spot has not been formed on the carrier.
Canon has also received US Patent No. 7,994,297, "Method of spotting probes on a solid support." The method includes spotting single-stranded nucleic acid probes on a surface of a solid support by an ink-jet printer where the probes are in an aqueous solution. The covalent bonding of the probes to the surface of the solid support through the intermediary of a substance is the effected, were the substance is derived from N-(6-maleimidocaproyloxy) succinimide. According to the patent, the bonding occurs via a reaction between a thiol group of a probe, the probe being one of the probes, with a maleimido group of the substance, with the reaction forming the covalent bonding between the thiol group of the probe and the maleimido group of the substance.
Iwate Prefecture of Morioka, Japan, has received US Patent No. 7,993,837, "Gene expression analysis using array with immobilized tags of more than 25 bp (SuperSAGE-array)." In this method, tags are provided, each of which includes an oligonucleotide of more than 25 base pairs for identifying expressed genes, where the 3'-end of the tag is defined by a cleavage site of a type III restriction enzyme and the 5'-end is defined by a cleavage site of another restriction enzyme located closest to the 3'-end of the cDNA of such genes. According to the patent, the tags are immobilized on a solid support, gene-containing samples are hybridized to the solid support, and the signals emitted from the genes hybridized to the tags are then detected to analyze the gene expression profiles in the samples.
Life Technologies of Carlsbad, Calif., has received US Patent No. 7,993,842, "Directed enrichment of genomic DNA for high-throughput sequencing." Microarrays of oligonucleotide primer pairs and microarrays of primers that consist of at least one cleavable linkage are provided. Methods to capture oligonucleotide primer pairs from one or more microarrays, and methods to use the captured oligonucleotide primer pairs, such as for amplification of a target polynucleotide sequence, are also described. In addition, methods of using a microarray to isolate, purify, and amplify a target polynucleotide are claimed.
Mowycal Lendingof Big Horn, WY, has received US Patent No. 7,993,907, "Biochips and method of screening using drug-induced gene and protein expression profiling." An array is provided that can be used in the identification of gene- and protein-induction or repression by drugs, the evaluation of efficacy and toxicity of any drug of choice, prediction of efficacy and toxicity of newly-discovered drugs, families of drugs or classes of drugs. A method for predicting the effect of a test composition for the treatment of a disease also is described. Using an array, a composition is tested in an animal model to obtain a first set of biological markers. The data is evaluated to predict the effect of the composition on the disease.
Samsung Electronics of Seoul, Korea, has received US Patent No. 7,994,097, "Microarray, substrate for microarray and methods of fabricating the same." The described array includes a substrate divided into a first region and a second region; linkers represented by specified formula directly coupled to the substrate in the first region but not coupled to the substrate in the second region; and probes coupled to the respective linkers.
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation of Madison has received US Patent No. 7,994,098, "Light directed DNA synthesis using inverse capping for error reduction." According to the patent, a prepared substrate upon which light-directed DNA synthesis is to occur is exposed to light via an inverse mask pattern to deprotect inactive regions of the substrate where the synthesis is not intended to occur. The deprotected sites are then capped to disable permanently the inactive areas, forming an inverse capped substrate. Unwanted DNA synthesis in the inactive areas is prevented, resulting in purer quality DNA.
PerkinElmer of Waltham, Mass., has received US Patent No. 7,994,296, "Arrays, computer program products and methods for in silico array-based comparative binding assays." The described arrays contain biological molecules immobilized to discrete and known spots on a substrate surface. The array includes different biological molecules and at least one calibration spot that consists of a mixture of different biological molecules present in the test spots.
Affymetrix of Santa Clara, Calif., has received US Patent No. 7,993,883, "Complexity management of genomic DNA." Methods are claimed for reducing the complexity of a nucleic acid sample based on non-gel based amplification of a subset of the sequences in a sample. According to the patent, the amplification of a subset can be accomplished by digesting a sample with restriction enzymes and ligating adaptors to the fragments so that only a subset of the fragments can be amplified. Analysis of the amplified sample can then be conducted by hybridization to an array, which may be specifically designed to interrogate the desired fragments for particular characteristics, such as the presence or absence of a polymorphism.
Eppendorf of Hamburg, Germany, has received US Patent No. 7,993,840, "Detection and/or quantification method of target molecules on a solid support." The method enables the detection and quantification of multiple target molecules present in a solution by quantifying online their binding on specific capture molecules immobilized at different locations of a surface of a solid support. More specifically, hybridization between capture DNA molecules present on a microarray and target polynucleotides present in solution can be detected in real time.