G-spots cause incorrect expression measurement in Affymetrix microarrays
2008

G-spots in Microarrays Affect Gene Expression Measurement

Sample size: 6685 publication Evidence: high

Author Information

Author(s): Graham JG Upton, William B Langdon, Andrew P Harrison

Primary Institution: University of Essex

Hypothesis

Do G-spot probes in Affymetrix microarrays lead to incorrect gene expression measurements?

Conclusion

G-spot probes should be excluded from gene expression calculations as they do not correlate well with other probes in their sets.

Supporting Evidence

  • G-spot probes are poorly correlated with other probes in their sets.
  • Over 40% of probesets in the HG-U133A GeneChip contain at least one G-spot probe.
  • Correlation coefficients were calculated from 6685 HG-U133A CEL files.

Takeaway

Some probes in gene tests can give wrong results because they behave differently than expected, so we should ignore them.

Methodology

The study analyzed correlation coefficients between probe pairs from thousands of microarray datasets to identify poorly performing probes.

Potential Biases

Potential bias due to the exclusion of certain probes may affect overall gene expression results.

Limitations

The study focused only on Affymetrix HG-U133A arrays and may not apply to other microarray platforms.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1186/1471-2164-9-613

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