Statistical issues in microarray data analysis

微阵列是一种新的技术，可以同时测量数千个基因的相对表达水平。它们允许医学研究人员在特定时间在生物体的特定组织类型中观察哪些基因是活跃的。澳大利亚的许多生物医学和生物学研究小组最近首次取消了微阵列实验，或计划在不久的将来进行微阵列实验。微阵列实验产生了大量的信息，如何提取这些信息的研究仍处于起步阶段。这个项目将解决微阵列数据分析中的一些基本问题。重点不在于下游分析的特殊方法，而在于所有微阵列实验共有的基本问题。该项目将确定如何在复杂的实验中将来自不同生物体的组织样本结合起来。它将开发评估微阵列实验结果质量的方法。这将使微阵列分析对生产伪影不那么敏感。它将利用基因表达系列分析（SAGE）的新用途，这是一种更准确但更昂贵且更难获得的技术，用于校准微阵列实验的结果。在该项目的生命周期内，研究结果将应用于沃尔特和伊丽莎霍尔研究所以及墨尔本大学的一些实验，这些实验涉及血细胞发育、细胞生长和增殖、对疟疾和利什曼病寄生虫的抵抗力以及唐氏综合症。

Microarrays are a new technology for measuring the relative expression levels of thousands of genes simultaneously. They allow medical researchers to take a genome-wide look at which genes are active in a particular tissue type in an organism at a particular time. Many biomedical and biological research groups in Australia have recently untaken microarray experiments for the first time or are planning microarray experiments in the near future. Microarray experiments produce massive amounts of information and the study of how to extract this information is still in a fledgling state. This project will solve a number of fundamental problems in microarray data analysis. The emphasis is not on special methods of down-stream analysis but on basic issues which are common to all microarray experiments. The project will determine how tissue samples from different organisms should be combined in complex experiments. It will develop methods for evaluating the quality of results from microarray experiments. It will make microarray analysis less sensitive to production artifacts. It will make novel use of serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE), a more accurate but more expensive and less available technology, to calibrate the results of microarray experiments. The results will be applied during the lifetime of the project to a number of experiments at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the University of Melbourne on blood cell development, cell growth and proliferation, resistance to malaria and leishmaniasis parasites, and Down syndrome.