Analysis of Affymetrix Exon Arrays
Exon arrays enable the monitoring of expression on a more fine-grained level than conventional 3’ arrays. By targeting single exons alternative splicing events can be detected. However, the increased amount of data resulting from the denser coverage of the transcribed regions gives rise to new challenges in data analysis compared to 3’ arrays. One must carefully decide which probes are considered for the final analysis to avoid measurements that are not reflecting biological reality. The most outstanding difference between gene level and exon level analysis emerges in the detection of differential expression. To decide whether an exon is differentially expressed between two conditions it must be set in relation to its corresponding gene. Therefore, completely new algorithms need to be applied. This work gives an overview on the analysis of Affymetrix exon arrays. Technical Design, Preprocessing and the detection of alternative splicing are dicussed and finally, a complete workflow is proposed.
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