This introductory course on microarray analysis is targeted to people without previous knowledge on this field.
We will cover the basic steps that should be followed to obtain a list of differentially expressed genes, starting from raw expression data.
The theoretical part of the course will be comprehensive and the similarities and differences between one- and two-color arrays will be discussed.
For the practical part, an already published public dataset of Agilent two-color arrays will be used for all subsequent hands-on work.
Students will get familiar with raw data format, background subtraction and normalization procedures that are needed before any differential expression analysis.
Some notions on experimental design and statistical tests will be given, and attendees will learn the value of biological replicates and the importance of multiple testing corrections.
Finally, we will present some useful tools to visualize the results and review the clustering methods, making emphasis on the interpretation of the results.