1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the examination of biological materials and, more particularly to providing a wavelength-tunable excitation light to excite a plurality of fluorophores associated with biological probe arrays and detect emissions from each of the fluorophores in response to the excitation light.
2. Related Art
Synthesized nucleic acid probe arrays, such as Affymetrix® GeneChip® probe arrays, and spotted probe arrays, have been used to generate unprecedented amounts of information about biological systems. For example, the GeneChip® Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 probe array available from Affymetrix, Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., is comprised of a single microarray containing over 1,000,000 unique oligonucleotide features covering more than 47,000 transcripts that represent more than 33,000 human genes. Analysis of expression data from such microarrays may lead to the development of new drugs and new diagnostic tools.