ABSTRACT

This introductory chapter discusses basic concepts of molecular biology, genomics and regulation of gene expression. Thereafter, an overview of the principles and fundamentals of microarrays is presented from a general perspective. In a superficial way, more emphasis is given on the means and methods for microarray production, scanning and the main steps of microarray image acquisition. Included also in this chapter are discussions, both general and specific, of the main methods for pre-processing and analyzing microarrays, including different aspects of gridding, segmentation, noise treatment, data storage and retrieval, and microarray data analysis tools available to the scientific community. The chapter also presents an overview of the existing resources for microarray data, publications, public databases and repositories, and analytical tools.