Editorial

Biological research in the past decade has been marked bythe emergence of the role of large scale molecular analyses.The notion of analyzing the whole genome of an organismhas been extended to proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids.Systems biology aims to understand the integrated workingsof these molecules in the networks and pathways of cellsand organisms. Drug discovery relies on the screening oflarge libraries of chemical compounds to identify those withdesired activities, and genomic, proteomic and systems biol-ogy approaches have the potential to make such screeningmore efficient and effective. Clinical research and practicestands to benefit from all of these approaches, as animproved understanding of the mechanisms of disease anddifferences among individual patients has the potential toimprove diagnoses and enable targeted treatment.

Each of these areas share a common need: quantitativehigh throughput measurements in limited sample volume fora large number of molecules. Analytical platforms are cur-rently emerging to fill this critical need in basic and appliedresearch settings. This special issue of Cytometry focuses onone of these, the use of microparticles and flow cytometry.

Microspheres have been the prototypical flow cyto-metry sample from the earliest days of flow cytometry,

and are used daily in hundreds of labs around the worldfor alignment, calibration, and standardization. The useof microspheres as solid supports for molecular analysisdate to the 1970s, but the need for highly parallel quan-titative methods has led to the development of commer-cial reagents, instruments, and assay kits. Multiplexedassays using optically-encoded arrays of microspheresand flow cytometry are now well established, and areplaying an increasing role in genomic and proteomicstudies.The potential of microparticle-based analyses using flow

cytometry is just beginning to be realized. Microparticle-based assays hold great promise for the analysis of manydifferent biomolecules and their activities, with applica-tions ranging from basic research to clinical diagnosticsand drug discovery. The papers in this special issue ofCytometry offer a snapshot of some existing and develop-ing applications of this analytical platform and offer ideasfor improved fluorescent signal and assay design.

John NolanMarie IannoneG�erard Lizard

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.

com).

DOI: 10.1002/cyto.a.20295

q 2006 International Society for Analytical Cytology Cytometry Part A 69A:317 (2006)