基因芯片技术在医药研究中的应用

基因芯片可同时对成千上万个基因的表达进行检测,根据其主要用途,该文将其作为医药研究中的筛选器和成像器加以叙述。作为筛选器,多数研究都根据研究目的不同,将实验样本以及不同时间点、不同剂量治疗后的组织或细胞作为标本,筛选差异表达基因;作为成像器,基因表达谱可用来区分不同组织生理及病理状态的特征,以利于疾病诊断,为其海量实验数据走向应用提供了借鉴。对于数据的生物信息学分析,目前仍以非监督的逐级聚类、k-m eans、自组织映射等聚类分析方法作为常用分析手段,通过不同算法辅助芯片实验结果对未知功能基因作出推测,对疾病的发病机制、诊断指标和治疗靶标作出判断。总之,基因芯片不只是纯粹的分子生物学技术,这项技术的广泛应用,使我们从以获取知识为主要目的的时代进入了以处理信息为主要目的的时代,为科学研究从实验的还原分析走向系统生物学的整体层次提供了必要的准备。

Application of gene chips in medical research

Gene chips can detect the expression of thousands of genes simultaneously. In this article, gene chips, as a screen apparatus and an imaging apparatus, were depicted according to its main uses. As a screen apparatus, in most researches, on account of different objects, the differential genes were screened by using experimental samples or tissues/cells on different times and different dosage; as an imaging apparatus, gene expression profile was used to discriminate different physiological and pathological characters in different tissue in order to diagnose a disease, which was good for vast data towards application. For bioinformatics analysis on data, at present, some cluster analyses such as non-supervised cluster, k-means and SOM are common analytical means, which presume the function of unknown genes by assisting experimental effects of chips through different algorithms, and judge pathogenesis, diagnose and treated target of diseases. In a word, gene chips is not only a kind of simple molecular biology technology, but also brings us from the period of acquiring knowledge to the period of dealing with information, which provides necessary preparation for researches from decomposed analysis to systemic biology.