"I'm not an engineer. I'm a geneticist," commented Donald Love of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, over breakfast the next morning. "I thought it would take at least a week to assemble the microarrayer. But we got it set up the very first day!"

The second day was even better, as the scientists began to install the microscope slides and to assemble the printing robots, each with 16 vertical, sharp-tipped pins that would deliver DNA "spots" to precise locations on the slides. After lightly touching each slide, the 16 pins would be dunked into a cleaning solution and dried before picking up fresh loads of DNA that represented other genes. Then the robot would maneuver the pins to a slightly different position over the glass slides and, acting like the tips of fountain pens, the pins would deposit extremely small, measured volumes of the new DNA onto new spots. "This is done over and over again, with very slight differences in the position of all 16 pins. That's how you create a high-density array," explained one of the participants as if he were an old hand at it.

Everything was ready at one of the lab tables. A scientist flipped a switch, and suddenly the pins started going up and down together, making a regular "choo-choo-choo" sound like a toy train engine. "It's happened!" cried out one of the group excitedly. "That's great," said DeRisi. "Once you get to the point where you're aligned and printing, you're in steady state. It just keeps running."

— Maya Pines

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