DiscernArray technology: a cell-free method for the generation of protein arrays from PCR DNA

Protein array technology offers a powerful tool to bridge genomics and proteomics. Currently, the bottleneck in the generation of protein arrays is the comprehensive production of functional proteins. We have developed a rapid cell-free method, DiscernArray, which creates functional protein arrays directly from PCR DNA by in vitro synthesis of individual tagged proteins on tag-binding surfaces, such that the tagged proteins are immobilized on a surface as they are synthesised. DiscernArray is particularly useful for arraying proteins and domains which cannot be functionally produced in heterologous expression systems or for which the cloned DNA is not available.