To detect the pairing, samples are tagged with fluorescent dyes, which light up under a special multi-laser scanner. And therein lies the power and beauty of biochip technology. Researchers will be able to study simultaneously the complicated interactions among thousands of genes. He points out that scientists already are performing functional genomics when they examine a gene and its protein products. The term today, however, refers to large-scale experiments.
Proteins are important because they define a cell's work and differentiate one cell from another.
Knowing which genes are active and which are at rest can tell scientists a lot about the function of a particular cell and its proteins. Take cancer cells, for example. They don't do the right things at the right times. Any one of 10,000 genes may be at fault, and we don't know where they are or what they do. We very much need to know the molecular nature of the disease.