A FLAW in a widely used “gene chip” has stopped some research projects dead
and set others back many months. The problem raises concerns about how far
researchers can trust this technology and the publicly available genome data on
which it is based.
Affymetrix of Santa Clara, California, makes the lab-on-a-chip in question,
which allows researchers to screen and identify thousands of mouse genes in
hours, and helps them with experiments on everything from ageing and behaviour
to gene therapy and neurodegenerative diseases.
“This hits us pretty hard,” says Andrew Brooks of the Functional Genomic
Center at the University of…
