The impact of protein biochips and microarrays on the drug development process.

With the genome sequences of several organisms now in public databases, the scientific community has realized that it is time to prepare for the next step: the understanding of biological systems or systems biology. Whereas genes contain the information for life, the encoded proteins and RNAs fulfill nearly all the functions, from replication to regulation. At present, there is a perceived demand for high-throughput and parallel analytical devices as research tools in systems biology, and, in addition, for new concepts to extract knowledge and value from these data. Protein biochips will play a decisive role in meeting this need in the future.