MassArray System Identifies Genetic Link to Diabetes

A study using a system called MassArray and DNA pooling was able to show that the HNF4A gene has a genetic association to adult-onset diabetes. The results were reported in the April 2004 issue of Diabetes.

The study was conducted by researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA), who used DNA sample pools of affected and healthy individuals to show the association. According to the study, "DNA pools can be used effectively to estimate differences in single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) allele frequencies between case and control populations.”

This strategy enables researchers to determine the frequency of an SNP marker in a population by quantitatively pooling hundreds of DNA samples into a single assay. Then researchers can evaluate SNPS within large patient pools before determining whether to include the SNP markers in individual analyses, which eliminates the need to conduct thousands of additional experiments.

The MassArray system was developed by Sequenom, Inc. (San Diego, CA, USA). "The costs of this study would likely have been prohibitive using competing technologies,” said Toni Schuh, Ph.D., president and CEO of Sequenom. "Further, due to the inherent flexibility of the MassArray system, a large study such as this can move from the conception stage to completed results in just a few weeks.”

Sequenom has used this strategy on a much larger scale to conduct all 12 of its genetic scans of the human genome for major human diseases such as cancer and diabetes. From these scans, the company now has more than 60 replicated genes of similar magnitude, including HNF3B, one of eight novel diabetes genes found in its diabetes program.




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