Gene expression profiling

In the field of molecular biology, gene expression profiling is the measurement of the activity (the expression) of thousands of genes at once, to create a global picture of cellular function. These profiles can, for example, distinguish between cells that are actively dividing, or show how the cells react to a particular treatment. Many experiments of this sort measure an entire genome simultaneously, that is, every gene present in a particular cell.

Several transcriptomics technologies can be used to generate the necessary data to analyse. DNA microarrays^[1] measure the relative activity of previously identified target genes. Sequence based techniques, like RNA-Seq, provide information on the sequences of genes in addition to their expression level.