nuID: A Novel Identifier for Oligos, Ideal for Oligonucleotide-based Microarrays

Gene Identifier v.s. Oligonucleotide Identifier Oligonucleotides (often simply referred to as oligos or oligomers), which are typically between 25 to 75 bases long, have been extensively used by DNA microarray manufacturers to detect the expression of different genes. An oligonucleotide sequence that is located on a specific bead or position on a microarray is usually referred to as the probe sequence, or just as the probe. Current microarrays by Affymetrix, Agilent, Illumina and others have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of unique sequence probes in an array. The identification of the genes that hybridize to probe is a critical step in interpreting the results of microarrays.