GENERAL GENOMICS SERVICE - GENE EXPRESSION UNIT

The Gene Expression Unit of the Genomics and Proteomics Service offers scientific advice and technical back-up, and provides the basic infrastructure to enable researchers from the University of the Basque Country and other public and private institutions from the Basque Autonomous Community and neighbouring regions to incorporate microarray technology and gene expression analysis into their projects. The services offered by the Unit include the experiments and protocols required in all projects involving the application of microarray technology, ranging from the experimental design of microarray experiment, processing and quality control of the samples, microarray processing and analysis of results, to the validation of those results and gene expression analysis using real-time PCR.

The Unit also offers training courses that mainly cover protocols and analysis of results.
Specifically, the Unit offers the following services:

• RNA extraction from cells and animal tissues. Please check with the Unit for any other type of tissue or bacteria.
• Quality control (QC) of RNA samples for use in the high-density microarray system and real-time PCR. (See the document)
• Microarray service provided by the Agilent Technologies platform. (See the document)
  1. Advice on experimental design and analysis of results.
  2. Advice and design of tailor-made arrays.
  3. Complete processing of Agilent Technologies microarrays of different formats: High Definition (HD) microarrayak (1x244K, 2x105K, 4x44K, 8x15K); SurePrint G3 microarrayak (1x1M, 2x400K, 4x180K, 8x60K).
  4. Complete processing of  Gene Expression, Exon, ChIP-on-chip, comparative genomic hybridization and Copy Nunmber Variation (CGH, CNV, CGH + SNP),  and microRNA (miRNA) microarrays.
• Gene Expression analysis using real-time PCR or quantitative PCR (Q-PCR). (See the document)
  1. Advice on experimental design.
  2. Design of primers and TaqMan probes using the PrimerExpress software (Applied Biosystems).
  3. cDNA synthesis.
  4. Optimization of primers for SYBR Green.
  5. Development of real-time PCR with 3 block format options: 96-Fast, 384-well and TLDA or MFC blocks, using two chemical techniques: SYBR Green or specific TaqMan probes.
  6. High Throughput gene expression and absolute quantification projects with the nanofluidic BioMark HD real time PCR System (Fludigm Corporation) 48.48 and 96.96 Dynamic Arrays for gene expression, and Digital Arrays for absolute quantification.
  7. Data analysis.