The Wellcome breakthrough

The project began when Dr Irina Udalova (now at the Kennedy Institute, London) and Dr loannis Ragoussis, head of genomics at the Centre, started pioneering work to establish binding profiles of human transcription factors using their inhouse microarray system. Dr Ragoussis explained: ôThis is ground-breaking work and the sequences in question are particularly long so we knew we would need a customised system. We also knew that OGT had the capability to synthesise long sequences directly on the slides and approached the company to explore ways of applying the methodology to our project. They put a considerable amount of work into setting up and optimising the protocol for converting the synthesised single-stranded oligonucleotides into double-stranded DNA duplexes, which was essential for our project.ö Meanwhile, Professor Sir Ed Southern FRS, founder and CSO of OGT has been awarded the 2005 Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research with Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys of Leicester University. This prestigious American prize was jointly conferred for the development of two powerful technologies û Southern blotting (hybridisation) and DNA fingerprinting û that revolutionised human genetics and forensic diagnostics. Their work led eventually to the mapping of the human genome.