Extending the Capabilities of Microarrays for Uncovering Functional Linkages Between Genes

David Galbraith, University of Arizona

Microarrays represent excellent high-throughput methods for producing the type of data central to uncovering functional linkages between genes. Nonetheless, the usefulness of microarrays in this respect is limited by the proportion of extant gene linkages whose existence can be deduced through analysis of total cellular RNA levels taken from intact tissues or organs, the most commonly employed sources of the targets used in microarray analyses. We have been addressing this problem through development of methods for isolation of non-standard sources of targets, focusing respectively on dissecting the individual contributions to global gene expression of specific cell types within complex tissues, and on dividing the overall pathway of gene expression into experimentally tractable subcomponents, including analysis of the regulation of transcription within the nucleus, and characterization of the relationship between transcript abundance and translation. These methods will be described, and the results emerging from their use will be discussed.

David W. Galbraith¹, Julia Bailey-Serres², Eugenia Zanetti², Changqing Zhang¹, Fang Cheng Gong^1,3, and Georgina Lambert¹.

¹Department of Plant Sciences and Bio5 Institute, University of Arizona; ²Center for Plant Cell Biology, Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside; ³Operon Biotechnologies, Inc.