Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News and Commentary
  • Published:

Microarrays as toxin sensors

The Pharmacogenomics Journal volume 3, pages 125–127 (2003)Cite this article

Microarrays can be used to identify toxin effects on gene expression, delineate detoxification pathways in vivo, and potentially as sensors to monitor human exposure.

‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ asked the memorable Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland,1 a riddle that has puzzled and amused readers for more than a century. This was not the only example of the Mad Hatter's strange behavior at Alice's infamous tea party. The Mad Hatter criticized Alice's long hair, an unusually forward and perplexing criticism of a Victorian girl, and sported a wristwatch that reported the day of the month but not the time of the day. So bizarre was the episode that an exasperated Alice regarded it as the ‘stupidest tea party I ever was at’,1 perhaps not surprising in view of the well-documented cases of mercury poisoning that afflicted felt hatmakers in the 19th century, producing a myriad of symptoms including severe neurological dysfunction.2 Although Carroll's Mad Hatter was a fictional character, the ‘mad hatter's’ syndrome was anything but that—so prevalent in fact that it resulted in a complete banning of mercury nitrate from the hat-making industry.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Carroll L . Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Grosset & Dunlap, Inc.: New York, NY, 2001, 320 pp.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Takaoka K, Takata T . Psychopathology 1999; 32: 47–49.

  3. Schettler T, Solomon GM, Valenti M, Huddle A . Generations at Risk: Reproductive Health and the Environment. The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 1999, 414pp.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Committee on Neurotoxicology and Models for Assessing Risk. Environmental Neurotoxicology. National Academies Press: Washington, DC, 1992, 166pp.

  5. Environmental Health Criteria, Number 208. Carbon Tetrachloride. World Health Organization: Geneva, Switzerland, 1999, 177pp.

  6. Young MB, DiSilvestro MR, Sendera TJ, Freund J, Kriete A, Magnuson SR . Pharmacogenomics Journal 2002; 3: 1–12.

  7. Schena M, Shalon D, Davis RW, Brown PO . Science 1995; 270: 467–470.

  8. Schena M, Shalon D, Heller R, Chai A, Brown PO, Davis RW . Proc Nat Acad Sci USA 1996; 93: 10614–10619.

  9. Lockhart DJ et al. Nat Biotechnol 1996; 14: 1675–1680.

  10. Maskos U, Southern EM . Oligonucleotide hybridizations on glass supports: a novel linker for oligonucleotide synthesis and hybridization properties of oligonucleotides synthesised in situ. Nucleic Acids Res 1992; 20: 1679–1684.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Ideker T et al. Science 2001; 292: 929–934.

  12. Chen BP, Wolfgang CD, Hai T . Analysis of ATF3 a transcription factor induced by physiological stresses and modulated by gadd153/Chop. Mol Cell Biol 1996; 16: 1157–1168.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Beltran PJ, Bixby JL, Masters BA . J Comp Neurol 2003; 456: 384–395.

  14. Schena M . Microarray Analysis. John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, NJ, 2003, 19p.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Flores-Morales A et al. Endocrinology 2001; 142: 3163–3176.

Download references

Acknowledgements

I thank my colleagues at TeleChem International, Inc. for their helpful comments and suggestions. This work was funded courtesy of TeleChem's ArrayIt Life Sciences Division. MS is a Visiting Scholar at TeleChem International, Inc.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. TeleChem International, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, USA

    M Schena

Authors
  1. M Schena
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to M Schena.

Additional information

DUALITY OF INTEREST

None declared.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Schena, M. Microarrays as toxin sensors. Pharmacogenomics J 3, 125–127 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.tpj.6500172

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.tpj.6500172

Search

Advanced search

Quick links