Empirical characterization of the expression ratio noise structure in high-density oligonucleotide arrays

Background High-density oligonucleotide arrays (HDONAs) are a powerful tool for assessing differential mRNA expression levels. To establish the statistical significance of an observed change in expression, one must take into account the noise introduced by the enzymatic and hybridization steps, called type I noise. We undertake an empirical characterization of the experimental repeatability of results by carrying out statistical analysis of a large number of duplicate HDONA experiments.