As a quick overview of the experimental
procedures,
Firstly take two samples, these could be
two cell populations, tissues disease states etc
Extract the RNA, There are several methods
depending on amount of starting material, however past work has shown that this is one of the largest
sources of
variation in the experiment. RNA quality is very important and reliable data is reliant on good quality
RNA
Next the RNA is reverse transcribed to
cDNA, depending on the amount of RNA this may involve an amplification step.
The two samples are then labelled with one
of two different flourophores cy5 and cy3 mixed then applied to the array and hybridised overnight
The slide is then washed and scanned, to
produce two tif files, one for each of the samples and flourophore used.
The images are then overlaid and the pixel
intensities for each probe quantified