Affymetrix Expression Profiling Service

General Information

Affymetrix Inc. pioneered the field of oligonucleotide microarrays and has been the microarray ”gold standard” for fifteen years now. Affymetrix’ GeneChip™ technology applies a combination of photolithography and combinatorial chemistry to directly synthesise 25mer oligonucleotides on a glass surface. Up to 6.5 million different oligonucleotides are synthesised on a 1.7 cm² surface – an area as small as a thumbnail. Moreover, GeneChip™ technology excels with an outstandingly high degree of automation and reproducibility. More than twenty thousand peer-reviewed publications in high-ranking scientific journals are based on Affymetrix GeneChip™ data.

Why Choose ATLAS Biolabs’ Services?

ATLAS Biolabs is an Authorised Affymetrix Service Provider
ATLAS Biolabs is certified according to the international standards ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 13485
ATLAS Biolabs’ personnel have successfully analysed tens of thousands of microarrays since 2001
Our service is fast (processing of up to 100 samples per day) and extremely reliable
We offer professional assistance for both planning experiments as well as further data analysis and interpretation

Affymetrix Expression Profiling Service Portfolio

Single cartridge format	3’ IVT arrays	Classical 3’approach based on poly(T) priming Available for more than 25 organisms including model organisms, production animals and agricultural crops
	Exon arrays	Investigation of all known and putative splice variants in man, mouse and rat
	Gene arrays	More complete coverage of genes than 3’IVT arrays More accurate view of total transcription activity than 3’IVT arrays
96well plate format	High throughput	Available for man, mouse and rat Human U219 array plate: based on RefSeq version 36 (July 2009) Human and Mouse Gene 1.1 ST Array Plates: 16, 24 or 96 samples at a time

Service Range

Full Service: Customer sends total RNA or mRNA. ATLAS Biolabs takes over the complete processing procedure incl. sample labelling, array hybridisation, washing, staining, scanning and basic data analysis.

Core Service: Customer sends labelled cRNA/cDNA. ATLAS Biolabs performs array hybridisation, washing, staining, scanning and basic data analysis.

Small Sample Service: available for very limited amounts of total RNA (10–20 ng).

Data Analysis: is offered at various levels; starting from the simple determination of the transcriptional status of a gene (absent/present) via calculation of significantly up- and down-regulated genes, to more sophisticated analyses such as hierarchical clustering or principal component analysis.

Quality Control

ATLAS Biolabs is certified according to the international standards ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 13485. Our production processes are subject to rigorous quality control at all steps:

Quality and quantity of each RNA sample sent to ATLAS Biolabs will be determined by analysis on an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer and by photometric analysis.
Customers receive a QC report documenting the quality of each single hybridisation.
All quality assurance procedures are electronically documented and available for our customers on demand.

Data Delivery

Timeline: 3–4 weeks after receipt of samples (for >50 samples, please inquire)
CD-ROM/DVD/external HDD sent to customer includes all original data (except from the dat file), as well as the results in XLS or TXT format