The Illumina BeadArray

Someone was asking me about the Illumina BeadArray and I thought I should probably try and figure out a little bit about how the current generation BeadArray chips work.

The BeadArray is Illumina’s hybridization array platform. The technology was originally acquired from Tufts university. At the time microarrays were all the rage.

BeadArrays provide an alternative method of building a hybridization array. Instead of printing known sequences at each location on an array, BeadArrays use beads randomly arrayed on a surface.

This is probably cost effective, but it introduces a second problem. How do you know what probes are in a given location on the array?