Double-stranded DNA microarray: principal, techniques and applications

Double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) microarray, also known as protein binding microarray (PBM), is an important technique that can be used to assay the interaction of DNA-binding protein (such as transcription factor, TF) with vast amount of DNA molecules in high-throughput format. This technique immobilizes large amount of various dsDNA molecules on the surface of a solid support (such as glass slide) for detecting the binding interaction of a DNA-binding protein with all of the immobilized dsDNA molecules, and thus determining the DNA-binding affinity, specificity and preference of TFs. In recent years, this technique has demonstrated its valuable applications in several aspects, including rapidly characterizing DNA-binding specificity of large number of TFs, building DNA-binding profiles of TFs, identifying DNA-binding sites and target genes of TFs, discriminating the subtle DNA-binding preferences of members and their dimmers of a TF family, and examining the effects of a cofactor on the DNA-binding specificity of TFs. This paper reviews the principal, techniques, and applications of dsDNA microarray.