Sanaa Muheisen | PubMed Health

PubMed2006

Three-color cDNA microarrays with prehybridization quality control yield gene expression data comparable to that of commercial platforms.

Despite their lower cost and high content flexibility, a limitation of in-house-prepared arrays has been their susceptibility to quality control (QC) issues and lack of QC standards across laboratories. Therefore, we developed a novel three-color array system that allows prehybridization QC as well as the Matarray software to facilitate acquisition of accurate gene expression data. In this study, we compared performance of our rat cDNA array to the Affymetrix RG-U34A and Agilent G4130A arrays using 2,824 UniGenes represented on all three arrays. Before data filtering, poor interplatform agreement was observed; however, after data filtering, differentially expressed UniGenes exhibited correlation coefficients of 0.91, 0.88, and 0.92 between the Affymetrix vs. Agilent, Affymetrix vs. cDNA, and Agilent vs. cDNA arrays, respectively. The Affymetrix, Agilent, and cDNA arrays agreed well with quantitative RT-PCR conducted on 42 UniGenes, yielding correlation coefficients of 0.90, 0.90, and 0.96, respectively. Each platform underestimated ratios relative to quantitative RT-PCR, possessing respective slopes of 0.86 (R2 = 0.81), 0.65 (R2 = 0.81), and 0.70 (R2 = 0.92). Overall, these data show that the combination of our novel technical and analytic approaches yield an accurate platform for functional genomics that is concordant with commercial discovery arrays in terms of identifying regulated genes and pathways.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2004

Immobilized probe and glass surface chemistry as variables in microarray fabrication.

BACKGROUND: Global gene expression studies with microarrays can offer biological insights never before possible. However, the technology possesses many sources of technical variability that are an obstacle to obtaining high quality data sets. Since spotted microarrays offer design/content flexibility and potential cost savings over commercial systems, we have developed prehybridization quality control strategies for spotted cDNA and oligonucleotide arrays. These approaches utilize a third fluorescent dye (fluorescein) to monitor key fabrication variables, such as print/spot morphology, DNA retention, and background arising from probe redistributed during blocking. Here, our labeled cDNA array platform is used to study, 1) compression of array data using known input ratios of Arabidopsis in vitro transcripts and arrayed serial dilutions of homologous probes; 2) how curing time of in-house poly-L-lysine coated slides impacts probe retention capacity; and 3) the retention characteristics of 13 commercially available surfaces. RESULTS: When array element fluorescein intensity drops below 5,000 RFU/pixel, gene expression measurements become increasingly compressed, thereby validating this value as a prehybridization quality control threshold. We observe that the DNA retention capacity of in-house poly-L-lysine slides decreases rapidly over time (~50% reduction between 3 and 12 weeks post-coating; p < 0.0002) and that there are considerable differences in retention characteristics among commercially available poly-L-lysine and amino silane-coated slides. CONCLUSIONS: High DNA retention rates are necessary for accurate gene expression measurements. Therefore, an understanding of the characteristics and optimization of protocols to an array surface are prerequisites to fabrication of high quality arrays.

Animals↗