Microarrays: interrogating the transplant transcriptosome.
The use of DNA microarrays as a hypothesis generation tool for determining gene expression differences across thousands of genes in a data set is increasing. Recently, the use of microarrays has been applied to the transplant field and holds great promise for unraveling the mechanisms at play in various transplant processes and for identifying new tissue-specific and noninvasive biomarkers predictive of clinical outcomes. As microarrays produce large amounts of data, bioinformatics tools are being developed to determine gene expression patterns. Gene clustering and class prediction tools aid in the discovery of molecular signatures in different disease processes while literature mining, gene family analysis and pathway analysis helps in understanding the biological relevance of these signatures. This chapter focuses on DNA microarrays, their application to transplantation, and reviews key research studies where DNA microarrays are applied to understand acute rejection, chronic rejection and tolerance in human transplantation.