The Microarray Applications in the Field of Rheumatology

The Microarray Applications in the Field of Rheumatology

In this issue of the Journal, Lin et al. call attention to a topic that has been of recent interest, gene expression profiles in the human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) by the effect of Tripterygium Wilfordii Hook F (TWHF) using microarray analysis. Determination of the human genome sequence and the development of microarray technologies allowing the rapid measurement of all genes in the genome have generated new perspectives for our current biomedical research. Microarray analysis will make a major contribution to our insight into the underlying biology of disease and will lead to improved methods for diagnostics, prognosis and treatment. Since the introduction of microarray analysis for large transcription detection among yeasts, the technology has experienced a vast distribution and an impressive range of applications in medicine from cancerogenesis to aging analysis, personalized medicine, and immunology. DNA microarray represents a technological intersection between biology and computers that enables gene expression analysis in human tissues on a genome-wide scale. This application can be expected to prove extremely valuable for the study of the genetic basis of complex diseases. The technique is based on DNA microarray chips made of different materials that contain oligonucleotides or purified cDNA samples designed to bind matching mRNA samples plotted on the chip. The chip is scanned and the image analyzed using the fluorescent intensity of the probe value as background.