Experimental Validation of Microarray Data

In this chapter, we describe a few popular experimental methodologies that can be used to independently validate the results of a microarray experiment. In contrast to many of the other chapters in this book, the techniques described here are decidedly non-mathematical or statistical in nature. Instead, most of them utilize standard 'wet-bench' molecular biology protocols that have proven themselves over the years to be highly robust and reproducible. Due to space limitations, it is obviously not possible to comprehensively describe the underlying theories and in-depth technical issues associated with each method. However, for each methodology, I have provided a brief schematic description that should sufficiently illustrate how the methodology works, and more importantly what it is meant to test. For readers who are interested in further investigating these techniques, there are several excellent molecular biology textbooks available in the literature (1). Better yet, some readers (presumably from a computer science or mathematical background) may pick up the challenge and decide to spend some time in a molecular biology laboratory!