Biases induced by pooling samples in microarray experiments.
BACKGROUND
If there is insufficient RNA from the tissues under investigation from one organism, then it is common practice to pool RNA. An important question is to determine whether pooling introduces biases, which can lead to inaccurate results. In this article, we describe two biases related to pooling, from a theoretical as well as a practical point of view.


RESULTS
We model and quantify the respective parts of the pooling bias due to the log transform as well as the bias due to biological averaging of the samples. We also evaluate the impact of the bias on the statistical differential analysis of Affymetrix data.
Mary-Huard
Tristan
T
UMR AgroParisTech/INRA MIA 518, 16 rue Claude Bernard 75231 Paris Cedex 5, France. maryhuar@inapg.fr
Daudin
Jean-Jacques
JJ
Baccini
Michela
M
Biggeri
Annibale
A
Bar-Hen
Avner
A
D016477:Artifacts; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics*; D008957:Models, Genetic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012107:Research Design; D018401:Sample Size; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity