Microarrays Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Microarrays, including details on experiments, designs, statistics, analysis, software.

Rat toxicogenomic study reveals analytical consistency across microarray platforms.

Guo L, Lobenhofer EK, Wang C, Shippy R, Harris SC, Zhang L, Mei N, Chen T, Herman D, Goodsaid FM, Hurban P, Phillips KL, Xu J, Deng X, Sun YA, Tong W, Dragan YP, Shi L

National Center for Toxicological Research, US Food and Drug Administration, 3900 NCTR Road, Jefferson, Arkansas 72079, USA.

To validate and extend the findings of the MicroArray Quality Control (MAQC) project, a biologically relevant toxicogenomics data set was generated using 36 RNA samples from rats treated with three chemicals (aristolochic acid, riddelliine and comfrey) and each sample was hybridized to four microarray platforms. The MAQC project assessed concordance in intersite and cross-platform comparisons and the impact of gene selection methods on the reproducibility of profiling data in terms of differentially expressed genes using distinct reference RNA samples. The real-world toxicogenomic data set reported here showed high concordance in intersite and cross-platform comparisons. Further, gene lists generated by fold-change ranking were more reproducible than those obtained by t-test P value or Significance Analysis of Microarrays. Finally, gene lists generated by fold-change ranking with a nonstringent P-value cutoff showed increased consistency in Gene Ontology terms and pathways, and hence the biological impact of chemical exposure could be reliably deduced from all platforms analyzed.

Published 11 October 2006 in Nat Biotechnol, 24(9): 1162-1169.
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