Microarrays Flashcards
What is a Microarray?
- An ordered assembly of nucleic acids immobilised on a solid support
- Support: Glass like microscope slide
What are Microarray probes?
- Probes are short pieces of single stranded DNA immobilised on the surface of the array
- They are oligonucleotides
- Each spot on the array consists of thousands of probes with the same sequence
What are the features of a microarray?
- 6.5 million locations on each GeneChip array
- Millions of DNA strands built up in each location
- Actual strand = 25 base pairs
How does the detection part of a microarray work?
You shine a laser at the GeneChip array which causes tagged DNA fragments that are hybridised to glow
How does a Microarray work?
View diagram
What have Microarrays been used for in the past?
- Gene expressions (transcriptomics)
- SNP genotyping (SNP arrays)
- Structural variant detection (array CGH)
What are these applications being replaced with now?
Replaced with next generation sequencing protocols:
- RNA sequencing
- Whole Exome - Whole Genome Sequencing (WES/WGS)
What are the expression levels of all genes in your sample?
The Transcriptome
How do you check which genes are expressed at different levels between different types of samples?
- Discover the biology of your sample
- Classify your sample
- Predict which class your sample belongs to
Briefly describe Gene Expression Microarrays
- Lots of copies of the same probe in a spot
- Each spot gives the relative expression for one transcript
- Detects all known transcripts in one sample
Describe how expression profiling workflow works
VD
What are the steps in Data analysis workflow?
Feature extraction -> Quality Control -> Normalisation -> Differential Expression analysis -> Biological interpretation -> Submit data to a public repository
Describe the Expression analysis pathway
Normalisation -> Hierarchial Clustering -> Gene Filtering -> Statistical tests -> Generate Gene lists -> Biological Interpretation
What is Clustering?
Organising data with similar patterns into classes. Objects within a class are more similar to each other than objects outside the class
What are data repositories?
They maximise utility of microarray experiments
Share data / Use other people’s data
- If users provide the minimum information about a microarray experiment then it’s easier to compare results
- ArrayExpress, EBI
- GEO: Gene Expression Omnibus, NCBI