text: Suspension array technology (or SAT) is a high throughput, large-scale, and multiplexed screening platform used in molecular biology. SAT has been widely applied to genomic and proteomic research, such as single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping, genetic disease screening, gene expression profiling, screening drug discovery and clinical diagnosis. SAT uses microsphere beads (5.6 um in diameter) to prepare arrays. SAT allows for the simultaneous testing of multiple gene variants through the use of these microsphere beads as each type of microsphere bead has a unique identification based on variations in optical properties, most common is fluorescent colour. As each colour and intensity of colour has a unique wavelength, beads can easily be differentiated based on their wavelength intensity. Microspheres are readily suspendable in solution and exhibit favorable kinetics during an assay. Similar to flat microarrays (e.g. DNA microarray), an appropriate receptor molecule, such as DNA oligonucleotide probes, antibodies, or other proteins, attach themselves to the differently labeled microspheres. This produces thousands of microsphere array elements. Probe-target hybridization is usually detected by optically labeled targets, which determines the relative abundance of each target in the sample.