The Seven Keys |
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Microarrays allow biological researchers to examine the expression of tens of thousands of genes at once. This advance has given researchers the opportunity to examine expression for an entire genome where before they could only look at a handful of genes at one time. Initially, low data quality and expense limited the usefulness of these tools for all but a few researchers, but hardware and production have both increased the quality of data, and made the arrays themselves less expensive, making high quality microarray research possible for most researchers.
Despite these advances, a bottleneck still exists in microarray research. The analysis of the large amounts of data produced by such research remains a significant challenge. There are many reasons for this, including expense and a lack of adequate training in the use of analysis software, but largely the reason is that microarray data analysis has been treated in the past as a set of separate steps. In reality, the process consists of many related and interdependent steps and includes steps, such as experimental design and platform selection. Though these are not traditionally thought of as integral to the data analysis process, both can have profound effects on statistical analysis. The Seven Keys describe this entire process, paying special notice to how each step affects the research as a whole. The guidelines described in the Seven Keys will make successful microarray research even more accessible. Choose one of the Keys above, or click here to begin.
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