MAQ – A Bioinformatics Tool for Automatic Macroarray Analysis

Abstract

This article presents a prototype of an application for the analysis of cDNA/gene expression data and contribution for genome annotation from macroarrays. The application described here allows the quantification of a set of experiments with macroarrays of the same size. It generates html reports, easily shared, showing the expression of genes contained in each membrane and a global report comparing films (expositions) and probes. Although initially the objective of this application was macroarray analysis, with minor adjustments, it can be used for other densitometric analysis involving circular dish plates such as petri dish plates, or multiple cell plates. It aims to be a simple, but effective, tool that does not require the user to have previous knowledge in image processing.