Not only have the methods changed, so have the tools. The name is derived from the silicon chips that revolutionized electronics. Equally big things are expected from that little biochip, from better medicines to better food ingredients to the basic understanding of the subtle differences in body chemistry that differentiate health from disease. Indeed, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, the biochip is being hyped as the next big thing, the marriage of microelectronics power and biotechnology promise. It's the target of efforts ranging from such rising gene chip start-ups as Affymetrix and Actura to a joint venture launched by Argonne National Laboratories and the electronics giant Motorola.
Biochips mean many things to many people.
Gene chips for decoding the genome are already on the market, and have reduced the time of gene sequencing from days to minutes. A physician's biochip of the future may be an inexpensive machine that can provide the patient with an instant and individualized DNA analysis, warning of possible future disease in plenty of time to head it off. In law enforcement, the crime scene investigator's biochip may be a portable gadget that can use DNA and other substances found at the scene of the crime to analyze the clues while they're still fresh. It was this quest for the bioengineering biochip that brought Dordick to Rensselaer in 1998 as Howard P. Isermann Professor. I was looking for a way to combine my ongoing work with new areas such as microelectronics and nanotechnology.