Max-Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, Ludwigstrasse 43, 61231 Bad Nauheim, Germany.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2012 Mar;40(6):2414-25. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkr1110. Epub 2011 Nov 28.
Exon arrays are regularly used to analyze differential splicing events. GeneChip Gene 1.0 ST Arrays (gene arrays) manufactured by Affymetrix, Inc. are primarily used to determine expression levels of transcripts, although their basic design is rather similar to GeneChip Exon 1.0 ST Arrays (exon arrays). Here, we show that the newly developed Gene Array Analyzer (GAA), which evolved from our previously published Exon Array Analyzer (EAA), enables economic and user-friendly analysis of alternative splicing events using gene arrays. To demonstrate the applicability of GAA, we profiled alternative splicing events during embryonic heart development. In addition, we found that numerous developmental splicing events are also activated under pathological conditions. We reason that the usage of GAA considerably expands the analysis of gene expression based on gene arrays and supplies an additional level of information without further costs and with only little effort.
外显子芯片通常用于分析差异剪接事件。Affymetrix, Inc. 生产的 GeneChip Gene 1.0 ST Arrays（基因芯片）主要用于确定转录本的表达水平，尽管它们的基本设计与 GeneChip Exon 1.0 ST Arrays（外显子芯片）非常相似。在这里，我们展示了新开发的 Gene Array Analyzer（GAA），它是从我们之前发表的 Exon Array Analyzer（EAA）发展而来的，使基因芯片能够经济、用户友好地分析选择性剪接事件。为了证明 GAA 的适用性，我们对胚胎心脏发育过程中的选择性剪接事件进行了分析。此外，我们还发现许多发育性剪接事件在病理条件下也被激活。我们认为，GAA 的使用大大扩展了基于基因芯片的基因表达分析，并在不增加成本和只需很少努力的情况下提供了额外的信息层次。
