Affymetrix (Palo Alto, CA) has a new rival in the DNA chip business. Corning (Corning, NY), the manufacturer of high-technology glasses and the inventor of the optical fibre has announced that it has 10,000-sample microarrays in beta-testing in research laboratories in the USA and Europe, and that it aims to become number 1 or 2 in the market within the next five years. Corning's manufacturing process uses its optical fibre manufacturing experience to draw down a honeycomb-like glass substrate with thousands of cells to a microscopic dimension in which the diameter of each cell is reduced 500% or more. That microscopic honeycomb is then used as a massively parallel printer head to deposit DNA (provided by a number of potential partner companies) onto a glass slide. The chips are expected to be in commercial production by the first quarter of 2001. In a comment that is clearly directed at Affymetrix, Corning has said that its process will “allow researchers to avoid having to pay large up-front fees or to sign long-term contracts, as is common practice in the industry today.”