Transcriptomics technologies
Fig 5
Microarray and sequencing flow cell.
Microarrays and RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) rely on image analysis in different ways. In a microarray chip, each spot on a chip is a defined oligonucleotide probe, and fluorescence intensity directly detects the abundance of a specific sequence (Affymetrix, Santa Clara, CA). In a high-throughput sequencing flow cell, spots are sequenced one nucleotide at a time, with the colour at each round indicating the next nucleotide in the sequence (Illumina Hiseq, San Diego, CA). Other variations of these techniques use more or fewer colour channels.