The first global analysis of human microarray data, appearing in the October Nature Genetics, maps which gene expression patterns are common among, and unique to, different types of tumors.

The cancer map is publicly available, as is the data analysis and visualization engine, GeneXPress, used to create it. "The tool allows researchers to look not just at single genes, but gives a higher order view by looking at modules of multiple genes at the same time," coauthor of the paper, Aviv Regev of Harvard University, told The Scientist. "And it's very easy to use."

"The whole thing is done in an automated fashion and can work on gene sets from other species besides humans and processes that are not cancer," added Daphne Koller from Stanford University, who also worked on the project.

The researchers scanned a cancer compendium of expression profile data from the Stanford Microarray Database...

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