Asian Rice Biotechnology Network (ARBN)

First Microarray & Bioinformatics Workshop

Seventy national agricultural research and extension system (NARES) collaborators from China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Philippines, Korea, Japan, and Iran as well as IRRI staff members from different divisions attended the very first Microarray and bioinformatics training workshop at IRRI, 3-7 December.

Sponsored by the Asian Rice Biotechnology Network (ARBN) as part of its continuing education and training program for NARES collaborators, the workshop was organized by ARBN Project Coordinator and Project Leader of Functional Genomics Hei Leung and assistant course coordinators Menchu Bernardo and Nollie Vera Cruz.

Director General Ron Cantrell and DG for Research Ren Wang formally opened the workshop at the ARBN lecture room. Participants aimed to provide knowledge on the principles of microarrays and their various applications. The workshop consisted of lectures, discussions, and laboratory demonstrations on microarray technology.

The laboratory sessions were conducted in the newly established Gene Array and Molecular Marker Facility. It consisted of demonstrations on array fabrication by Kathiresan Arumugam and Jianli Wu; target labeling and total RNA extraction by Malou Ramos, Sugiyama Nobuko, Hosseini Salekdeh, and Evelyn Liwanag; image acquisition and analysis by Menchu Bernardo and Nollie Vera Cruz; and a demo on bioinfomatics and database by Richard Bruskiewich, Graham McLaren, and Ken McNallly.

Microarray experts Dr. Shoshi Kikuchi, leader of the Microarray Project, Japan Rice Genome Program, National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences; and Dr. Andrzej Kilian, chief scientist and director of genomics research, Center for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture (CAMBIA), Australia, gave lectures on the applications and discussed their experience in setting up microarray systems and ongoing research on microarray. IRRI staff members also provided lectures specifically on the genetic stocks available at the Institute for microarray analysis under the functional genomics project.


Dr. Andrzej Kilian of CAMBIA explains one of the applications of Microarray called DART, a diversity array technology.	Dr. Nollie Vera Cruz discusses the image acquisition and analysis of arrays using a GeneTAC LS IV scanner.

Dr. Kathiresan demonstrates the use of BIOMEK 2000, a robotic used for high-throughput liquid handling.	Participants of the first Microarray and Bioinformatics Training Workshop at IRRI, December 3-7, 2001.