The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) sponsored Pathogen Functional Genomics Resource Center (PFGRC) at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI), in collaboration with the Center for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition of the FDA, the National Bioforensics Analysis Center of the Department of Homeland Security, and Affymetrix is making available, at no cost to investigators, the Affymetrix FDA-ECSG custom microarray. This Affymetrix E. coli microarray contains 23,090 probe set targets representing 32 diverse E. coli and Shigella strains as well as 46 related plasmid sequences (click here for more details). The microarray has been validated against a large collection of E. coli and Shigella strains that were associated with temporally and geographically diverse outbreaks. The array is able to accurately detect each gene target represented on the array. The microarrays are designed based on 11 oligo pairs per gene target. The arrays do not target the complete genome, and thus cannot be used for direct resequencing.

Individuals are invited to submit their requests through the PFGRC microarray application process. A clear and well thought out explanation of the project to which these microarrays will be applied is essential and collaboration with the PFGRC is encouraged in these proposals.