ABSTRACT
Natalia Bochkina1 and Alex Lewin2 1School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh, Mayfield Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JZ, UK; 2Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Imperial College, Norfolk Place, London W2 1PG, UK
High throughput DNA microarrays have become one of the main sources of information for functional genomics. Microarrays permit researchers to capture one of the fundamental processes in molecular biology, the transcription process from genes into mRNA (messenger RNA), that will be subsequently translated to form proteins. This process is called gene expression. By quantifying the amount of transcription, microarrays allow the identification of the genes that are expressed in different types of cells, different tissues and to understand the cellular processes in which they intervene.
