Statistics and Data Analysis for Microarrays Using R and Bioconductor - 9781439809754

"Preface Although the industry once suffered from a lack of qualified targets and candidate drugs, lead scientists must now decide where to start amidst the overload of biological data. In our opinion, this phenomenon has shifted the bottleneck in drug discovery from data collection to data anal- ysis, interpretation and integration. Life Science Informatics, UBS Warburg Market Report, 2001 One of the most promising tools available today to researchers in life sciences is the microarray technology. Typically, one DNA array will provide hundreds or thousands of gene expression values. However, the immense potential of this technology can only be realized if many such experiments are done. In order to understand the biological phenomena, expression levels need to be compared between species or between healthy and ill individuals or at different time points for the same individual or population of individuals. This approach is currently generating an immense quantity of data. Buried under this humongous pile of numbers lays invaluable biological information. The keys to understanding phenomena from fetal development to cancer may be found in these numbers. Clearly, powerful analysis techniques and algorithms are essential tools in mining these data. However, the computer scientist or statistician that does have the expertise to use advanced analysis techniques usually lacks the biological knowledge necessary to understand even the simplest biological phenomena. At the same time, the scientist having the right background to formulate and test biological hypotheses may feel a little uncomfortable when it comes to analyzing the data thus generated"--