Microarray Analysis - Problems and Potential Solutions

The explosion in sophisticated experimental techniques and hence in the potential biological information they provide has led to a paradigm shift in molecular biology. Pre-genomic biology followed, in general, a traditional hypothesis-driven approach, in which qualitative methods were applied to small sub-systems. In contrast to this modern post-genomic molecular biology takes a more holistic approach which is intrinsically data-driven and increasingly relies on quantitative methods. In this sea of data bioinformatics has emerged as an essential part of making sense of information in molecular life-sciences. At the very deepest levels, biology is changing from a qualitative to a quantitative science. This talk will concentrate on analysis; and on analysis of gene microarrays in particular. We will consider this as a case study in data-driven inference. We look at the issues of representation, gene selection and inference.