DNA microarray technology has a bright future, and a great deal of potential.
This is due to the fact that there are a number of features of DNA microarray technology that are advantageous to its use.
These include:

1. The great advantage of being able to study the behaviour of many genes simultaneously that is afforded by the technique.

2. The speed of using the technique is one of its main benefits.

   There can be as many as 150 copies of an array of 12,000 genes printed in only 1 day.

3. DNA microarray technology is relatively cheap to use.

   As previously described in Equipment the initial cost of constructing an arrayer is approximately $60,000. After this, the cost per copy of a microarray is small, usually less than $100. This has the added advantage of allowing research to take place much more freely; if investigation must be carried out, it can be done readily without much agonising over the cost. It is also true to say that the cost of this technique will only fall in the coming years, as more research in academic institutions is done and commercial competition forces the prices down.

4. The technique of DNA microarrays is very user-friendly.

   A number of advantages are conferred by the fact that the technique is neither radioactive nor toxic; that the microscope slide is a convenient base for the technique; and that arrays are cheap and easily replaced.

5. DNA microarrays are both adaptable and comprehensive.

   This accelerates the pace at which information is being generated, and so efficient ways for transforming this information into methods of exploration are very desirable.

Data already available to us illustrates the importance of the technique of DNA microarrays. As well as over a thousand arrays of the entire yeast genome, there has been printed hundreds of copies of each of arrays of:

more than 95% of the predicted genes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis,
all the predicted genes of Escherichia coli,
over 3000 Drosophila melanogaster genes,
thousands of Caenorhabditis genes,
over 14,000 human genes,
all the genes of the Cytomegalovirus, and
over 3,000 Plasmodium falciparum genes.

A major advantage of DNA microarrays is that information about the sequence of the DNA is not required to construct and use the DNA microarrays. In fact, most of the human genes that have used microarray technology in expression studies are only defined by partial EST sequences at the moment.

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