title: What do microarrays really tell us about M. tuberculosis?
abstract: Bacterial pathogens adapt to their host environments to a large extent through switching on complex transcriptional programmes, and whole-genome microarray experiments promise to reveal this complexity. There has been a recent burst of articles reporting transcriptome analyses of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, including for the first time studies in macrophages and mice. We review gene expression reports, and compare them with each other and with microarray-based gene essentiality studies, revealing at times a startling lack of correlation. Additionally, we suggest a standardization format for the submission of processed data for publication, to facilitate cross-experiment analyses.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Infectious Diseases, Royal Veterinary College, Royal College Street, London NW1 0TU, UK.
authors.forename: Sharon L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Kendall
authors.forename: Stuart C G
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Rison
authors.forename: Farahnaz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Movahedzadeh
authors.forename: Rosangela
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Frita
authors.forename: Neil G
authors.initials: NG
authors.lastname: Stoker
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; D009169:Mycobacterium tuberculosis / Q000187:drug effects / Q000235:genetics*; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D012329:RNA, Bacterial / Q000032:analysis / Q000302:isolation & purification
chemical_list: D012329:RNA, Bacterial