Processor evolution: from silicon chip to gene chip. And now protein chips. In this pharmacopoeia life, the future is Protein.Corning, the industry innovator and current leader in fibre optics, has announced a breakthrough in the production process of gene chips. With a manufacturing speed ten to twenty times faster than before, the new gene chips can additionally store thousands of bits rather than the current max of 500 per chip.Gene chips, aka microarrays, are slivers of glass or nylon that are used to analyse genetic material. Each chip is covered in tiny holes of less than 200 micron diameter and pre-loaded with known genetic base sequences. The unique base pairing bonding of DNA means that the known implanted gene material on the chip will bond uniquely with the complimentary base sequence in the specimen under analysis. Once the chip is taken out of the unknown solution the chips patterning and bonding can be examined and the composition of the specimen determined.With the market set to expand from its current value of $25 million to an estimated  $1 billion in the next five years, the trad silicon tech players are entering the field: check Motorola who own 16% in Genometrix and Hewlett Packard’s’ spin off Agilent Technologies who are facing off with the death star of biotech:Glaxo Wellcome with their 20% in Altymetrix.While the gene chip market is expanding, the future wave money is on protein chips: similar to gene chips, but embedded with raw protein rather than DNA material. As chief of Oxford Glycosciences , Michael Kranda says: ?The pharmaceutical world is all about proteins. Either the drugs themselves are proteins, or the substances with which the drugs interact [to produce their therapeutic effect] are proteins. The entire pharmacopoeia of currently-marketed drugs hits only about 500 protein targets. There are an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 proteins that are therapeutically relevant.“At the Howard Hughes medical institute, recent prototype protein chips have been shown to have the ability to detect  protein2protein interactions, enzyme2substrate interaction and small molecule 2 protien interruption. As the scientists who executed the experimental chip design, Schreiber and Mcbeath, stated:“The proteome?that is, the cell’s array of proteins is more complex than the genome. Although one gene may encode one protein, those proteins are modified in many ways after they are constructed. So, each gene product may result in dozens of proteins that have been rearranged, fragmented or chemically modified to produce a slightly different activity. And there is every reason to believe that these modified proteins are going to be key elements to understanding function and eventually physiology. The future is proteomics. The future is Protein.