Expression technology - A review of the performance and interpretation of expression microarrays

Molecular profiling has become a fundamental part of biomedical research, but much more importantly, it is now a direct part of health care. This device for highly parallel measurements of gene expression was once restricted to pure research laboratories. It has now taken its place next to pathology reports as a tool to validate and elaborate upon cellular phenotypes that provide clues to disease status and progression. This article describes general tendencies of the most widely used profiling device, the gene expression array, with some attention paid to other technologies such as head-based devices and e-detection. The paper also examines the characteristics of this technology that makes it so dependent upon robust data normalization and also examines the biological consequence of error