Design of Custom Oligonucleotide Microarrays for Single Species or Interspecies Hybrids Using Array Oligo Selector

New technologies for DNA sequencing have made it feasible to determine the genome sequence of any organism of interest. This sequence is the resource required to create tools for downstream studies, including DNA microarrays. A number of vendors can produce DNA microarrays containing customer-specified sequences, allowing investigators to design and order arrays customized for any species of interest. Freely available, user-friendly computer programs are available for designing microarray probes. These design programs can be used to create probes that distinguish between two related genomes, allowing investigation of gene expression or gene representation in intra- or interspecies hybrids or in samples containing DNA from multiple species.