1ARS-United States Department of Agriculture, Beltsville, MD 20705 USA
2C.R.A.- Plant Pathology Research Center, Via C.G. Bertero, 22–00156 Rome, Italy.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the International Conference of Indian Virological Society on “Emerging and Re-emerging viral Diseases of the Tropics and Subtropics” at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India, December 11–14, 2007.
DNA microarrays were introduced in 1995 for simultaneous analysis of large-scale gene expression patterns. They have the capacity to apply many thousands of nucleotides in an ordered array to a surface, thus allowing the parallel interrogation of thousands of different sequences at once. Since then, this technology has attracted great interest among biologists and it is currently being applied in genomic, biomedical, and pharmacological research as well as medical diagnosis and food safety and quality. Recently, DNA microarrays have been used in the detection and diagnosis of human, animal, and insect viruses; bacteria; parasites; food-borne pathogens; pathogens in veterinary samples; fish pathogens; and plant pathogens. The later include nematodes, fungi, bacteria, viruses, viroids and phytoplasmas. In the case of systemic plant, animal and human pathogens, this technology overcomes the limitations inherent in current detection methods. Developing DNA microarrays for specific human viruses, animal viruses, plant viruses, viroids and/or phytoplasmas have many uses such as in pathogen quarantine programs, epidemiology, vector transmission, host range, and in the discovery of new strains. A DNA microarray containing the complete specific plant pathogen genome sequence may be used for studying the pathogen-host gene interaction which may lead to the development of plants resistant or tolerant to the pathogen infection. The scientific background, principals, types, and the technical aspects of obtaining experimental data for DNA microarrays will also be presented.
