Antibody arrays for determination of relative protein abundances.

As a large number of genome-sequencing projects reached completion, the attention of the scientific community is turning toward understanding the structure-functions of gene translation products-the proteins as well as the complete complement of proteins-the proteome. One goal of proteomics is to correlate changes in protein abundance with biological processes and disease states. To help accelerate this avenue of proteomics, a significant effort has been devoted to the development of multiplexed methods for protein analyses. We have developed an Antibody Microarray, a chip-based technology for multiparallel determination of relative abundance of hundreds of proteins. The Antibody Microarray is composed of hundreds of distinct monoclonal antibodies printed at high density on a glass slide. It utilizes a novel experimental setup and data analysis algorithm, which enables scientists to assay hundreds of cytosolic, nuclear, and membrane-bound proteins with a single experiment. Examples of biological samples that are analyzed on the Antibody Microarray include tissue samples, cell cultures, and body fluids.