ABSTRACT

Abstract. Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) microarrays are part of a new and promising class of biotechnologies that allow the simultaneous monitoring of expression levels in cells for thousands of genes. Microarray experiments are increasingly being performed in biological and medical research to address a wide range of problems. In cancer research, microarrays are used to study the molecular variations among tumors, with the aim of developing better diagnosis and treatment strategies for the disease. Classification is an important question in microarray experiments, for purposes of classifying biological samples and predicting clinical or other outcomes using gene expression data. Although classification is by no means a new subject in the statistical literature, the large and complex multivariate datasets generated by microarray experiments raise new methodological and computational challenges.