A biochip refers to a collection of miniaturized test sites, or microarrays, arranged on a solid substrate that permits many tests to be performed at the same time in order to achieve higher throughput and speed. Like a computer chip that can perform millions of mathematical operations in one second, a biochip can perform thousands of biological reactions, such as decoding genes, in a few seconds. Biochips helped to dramatically accelerate the identification of the estimated 80,000 genes in human DNA. In addition to genetic applications, biochips are being used in toxicological, protein, and biochemical research.
