ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Phenotype microarray

Do you like playing with building blocks? Well, imagine you have a lot of different types of building blocks in front of you, each with a unique shape and color. You also have a big board with many different shapes that can fit these blocks. Now, your job is to find out which block fits which shape on the board.

This is exactly what scientists do when they want to understand how different living things work. They want to see which building blocks (in the case of living things, they are called molecules) fit where in the body of a living creature. The way scientists find this out is by using something called a Phenotype microarray.

Phenotype microarray is a tool that helps scientists understand how living things grow, move, and react to different conditions. It's like a big board with many tiny wells, and each well contains a different type of food or drug. The scientists take tiny living things (like bacteria or fungi) and put them in each well to see how they react.

Each response gives the scientists a clue about what kind of molecules the tiny living things need to grow or how they react to different conditions. For example, some living things can only grow in the presence of oxygen, while others can grow in both oxygen and no-oxygen conditions.

So, just like how we fit different shapes of blocks to their corresponding shapes on the board, scientists fit different types of food and drugs to the tiny living things on the microarray to see how they function or survive. By understanding how different molecules and living things interact, scientists can create new medicines or treatments for diseases, and that's why it's a very important tool in science.