Riken Genomic Science Center( http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994445 ) has produced a textbook sized tome containing 60770 clones of mouse complementary dna. Researchers can simply punch the clones out of the page, dissolve them in water, amplify them with the polymerase chain reaction, and put them to use. [http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994445]
Yoshihide Hayashizaki from the RIKEN Genomic Sciences Centre in Yokohama, Japan, devised a mouse encyclopaedia that looks like an ordinary hardback, but the paper is water-soluble and instead of words, the pages contain a series of dots that hold duplicate copies of the DNA forming the 60,000 known active mouse genes.
To "read" the book, researchers punch out the paper dots containing the DNA clones - copied from the genes expressed in mouse cells - and dissolve them in water."
The paper disappears and DNA appears," says Hayashizaki. Within a few hours, unlimited copies of the genes can then be made using the DNA amplification technique PCR. Only 10 copies of the mouse encyclopaedia have been published so far.
Alison George