<it>SIMAGE</it>: <it>si</it>mulation of DNA-<it>m</it>icro<it>a</it>rray <it>g</it>ene <it>e</it>xpression data

• Main Authors: Kuipers Oscar P, Kok Jan, Jansen Ritsert C, Albers Casper J, van Hijum Sacha AFT
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: BMC 2006-04-01
• Series: BMC Bioinformatics
• Online Access: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/7/205

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Simulation of DNA-microarray data serves at least three purposes: (i) optimizing the design of an intended DNA microarray experiment, (ii) comparing existing pre-processing and processing methods for best analysis of a given DNA microarray experiment, (iii) educating students, lab-workers and other researchers by making them aware of the many factors influencing DNA microarray experiments.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Our model has multiple layers of factors influencing the experiment. The relative influence of such factors can differ significantly between labs, experiments within labs, etc. Therefore, we have added a module to roughly estimate their parameters from a given data set. This guarantees that our simulated data mimics real data as closely as possible.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We introduce a model for the simulation of dual-dye cDNA-microarray data closely resembling real data and coin the model and its software implementation "<it>SIMAGE</it>" which stands for simulation of microarray gene expression data. The software is freely accessible at: <url>http://bioinformatics.biol.rug.nl/websoftware/simage</url>.</p>