Agilent Technologies Introduces Whole Rat Genome Oligonucleotide Microarray

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today introduced the most up-to-date whole-genome oligonucleotide microarray for the study of the rat, an organism widely used in the field of toxicogenomics. With probes for more than 41,000 unique genes and transcripts, the Agilent Whole Rat Genome Oligo Microarray provides the broad genome coverage, validated genomic content and sensitivity researchers need to better assess the effect of environmental toxins or drug interactions on cells.

Each microarray features highly sensitive 60-mer oligonucleotide probes, which allow increased detection of low-expressing, or rare, genes. Researchers want to identify a toxic response as soon as possible, and this sensitivity enables the identification of changes in toxic response pathways earlier than previously possible.

"Agilent is committed to providing researchers a high-caliber, microarray-based solution for toxicological assessment," said Michael Booth, Agilent's gene expression general manager. "That requires sensitivity, which our platform has, and good genomic information. Because the rat genome has historically been less well characterized than the genomes of mouse or human, we have applied significant effort to validating the genomic information used for our microarray probes. This added value will give researchers confidence in the accuracy of their gene information and the utility of their experiment results."

Agilent's microarray probes are based on recently released sequence information from the public genome databases RefSeq, UCSC GoldenPath, Ensembl, Genbank LocusLink, Homolgene and UniGene. Sequence orientation was validated based on the most up-to-date release of the rat genome (Build rn3), as released by the Rat Genome Sequencing Project Consortium and published in Nature (April 2004). To ensure optimal performance, approximately 70 percent of the probes have also been validated empirically, a critical step that verifies the actual functionality of genes in rat that had previously been predicted based on similarity to human genes.

Customers will have full access to the 60-mer probe sequences and gene function annotation via Agilent's eArray 3.0 website (earray.chem.agilent.com), a new Web portal announced today that enables researchers to access Agilent's genomic content and design their own DNA microarrays. Each rat microarray (G4131A) comes with a customizable region where customers can add their own sequence content using Agilent's eArray portal.