A protein microarray (or protein chip), according to Wikipedia, is a high-throughput method used to track the interactions and activities of proteins, and to determine their function, and determining function on a large scale. The main advantage of it is that large numbers of proteins can be tracked in parallel.
In the process of protein expressions, a high throughput protein microarray technique is of great importance for it enables measurement of protein expression levels in hundreds of biological samples. In Creative BioMart, proteins extracted from cell lysates, bio-fluids or fixed-tissues are immobilized as spots in rows on a solid support.
Recently, Creative BioMart conducted an analysis to compare its protein expression microarray with western blot. The analysis found that microarray in Creative BioMart has a more fast speed: Creative BioMart has 500 samples per slide and 16 antibodies per slide, while western blot 10 samples per gel and 1 antibody per gel. Moreover, protein expression microarray in Creative BioMart requires low amount sample (only 5ul to test hundreds of targets simultaneously), while western blot needs significant sample that is 10ul for each of target to test. In terms of data quality, BioMart has the accuracy of 5% and the other with 20%.