ProtoArray Microarray Scanners and Detection

ProtoArray services and its associated products have been discontinued, information here is for reference.

ProtoArray Human Protein Microarrays can be easily read with most commercially available fluorescent microarray scanners. See the table below for a list of compatible scanners.

The high-sensitivity, low-background, signal stability, and commercial availability of fluorescence microarray scanners make fluorescence detection the preferred method for detecting interactions on the microarray. Our Alexa Fluor detection system is the recommended fluorescence detection method. The Alexa Fluor 647 fluorophore is brighter and more stable than other commercially available dyes such as Cy5 dyes, and is more sensitive for the detection of interactions on protein arrays. We have demonstrated that detection with Alexa Fluor 647 produces approximately 2‑fold higher signal/background ratios than Cy5 detection. A list of known, compatible scanners is shown in Table 1. If you have any questions about the compatibility of your scanner with the ProtoArray Human Protein Microarrays please contact technical support.

Scanner compatibility with ProtoArray Human Protein Microarrays

Company and instrument names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Detection is performed with a phosphorimager or conventional autoradiography film. The phosphorimager or autoradiography film must have resolution of at least 50 micron. The silver grain on most X-ray film is smaller than 50 micron and most common desktop scanners allow for at least 50 micron resolution scanning. For tritiated small molecule profiling, a tritium-sensitive phosphor screen should be used.

The typical exposure time for kinase substrate profiling is 16–18 hours. For tritiated small molecule and methyltransferase substrate profiling assays, the typical exposure time is two weeks. A minimum resolution of 600 dpi should be used when acquiring data with a phosphorimager.