A Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm Based Approach to the Optimization of Oligonucleotide Microarray Production Process

Microarrays are becoming more and more utilized in the experimental platform in molecular biology. Although rapidly becoming affordable, these micro devices still have quite high production cost which limits their commercial appeal. Here we present a novel multiobjective evolutionary approach to the optimization of the production process of microarray devices mainly aimed at lowering the number of fabrication steps. In order to allow the reader to better understand what we describe we report herein a detailed description of a real-world study case carried out on the most recent microarray platforms of the market leader in this field. A comparative analysis of the most widely used approaches, main potentialities and drawbacks of the proposed approach are presented.