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Sex, flies and microarrays

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In a typical microarray study, experimental RNA samples are compared to a reference sample and expression ratios are clustered. A new study of the effects of sex, aging and genotype on gene expression in Drosophila melanogaster departs from this paradigm. Highly replicated comparisons generate measures of expression that are analyzed using classical analysis of variance (ANOVA) techniques, revealing substantial differences in gene expression between the two sexes as well as smaller effects of age and strain. Moreover, this study demonstrates that replication and experimental design are essential to detecting small but biologically important differences in expression patterns.

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Figure 1: A 'volcano plot' reproduced from Jin et al.3
Figure 2: The pairings in a hypothetical microarray experiment using 32 microarrays to assay 16 samples are represented as a graph.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Jackson Laboratory, 600 Main Street, Bar Harbor, Maine, USA

    Gary A. Churchill

  2. Laboratory of Cellular and Developmental Biology, NIDDK, National Institutes of Health, 50 South Drive, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

    Brian Oliver

Authors
  1. Gary A. Churchill
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  2. Brian Oliver
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Churchill, G., Oliver, B. Sex, flies and microarrays. Nat Genet 29, 355–356 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1201-355

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