Talk:Microarray
Template:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology
Template:WikiProject Computational Biology This article seems to be suited for people who already have a near graduate student level understanding of the bioscience and biotech discussed in the article. In other words, it is understandable to practitioners, but not to partly/intermediately literate folks like me (who might be otherwise strongly versed in genetic theory, but fall short of being biologists). In yet other words, if I were advanced enough to understood the concepts being used in this article, I wouldn't need to look up "microarray" in Wikipedia. That sets up a catch-22: only the people who already know what a microarray is, or who don't need to turn to Wikipedia to understand the concept, will understand this article.
Main suggestion: Expand and explain every technical term in the following:
"A microarray is a multiplex lab-on-a-chip. It is a 2D array on a solid substrate (usually a glass slide or silicon thin-film cell) that assays large amounts of biological material using high-throughput screening miniaturized, multiplexed and parallel processing and detection methods."
To non-initiates, the terms "multiplex lab-on-a-chip," and "using high-throughput screening miniaturized, multiplexed and parallel processing and detection methods" are quite opaque (not helpful at all), and at the very least, need to be explained to the poor reader.
Another vital improvement would be to help the reader understand what an "array on a chip" is. A traditional array involves words on paper, where the words REPRESENT some items - concepts, physical items, …whatever, and their relationships. But words on paper do not physically interact with each other, whereas a microarray seems to be an array of physical items placed in a grid-like spatial arrangement where the physical interactions of these components is somehow very important to the method of assaying what the components of the array do - it is a "lab" where placing components in an array is part of doing experiments that extract useful information. This article would improve by leaps and bounds if it described the structure of this physical array, and the manner in which the components interact with each other to produce instructive information.