If you’re studying molecular biology or genetics, you may have to deal with microarray data analysis, which is one of the most recent and most effective technologies in genetic research. It allows us to study the behavior of multiple genes in an organism in a single experiment and to predict possible genetic change under certain conditions.
If you’re asked to do a microarray analysis, you can use either of these options (depending on which is available at your lab):
As the latter is much more expensive, most students have access to glass slides only. For this kind of research, you don’t need any specific equipment (except for the glass slide itself, since a microscope and a couple of other instruments you can usually find in almost any college lab). However, it goes without saying that the chips are supposed to be more precise.
The process itself is not as complicated as it seems to be. In short, here are the steps one has to follow:
Writing a research paper in the field of genetics is completely different from writing a paper in any other subject. Your success depends purely on your understanding of the subject, so make sure you know how to perform the analysis correctly.
Then, you have to fully understand the assignment you’ve been given. You might have to perform a microarray expression analysis, a microarray for mutation analysis or a comparative genomic hybridization. Although the principles of working with microarrays are basically the same, the technology is slightly different in each of these cases.
What you’re required to indicate in your paper is the process and the result of your work, and there is no ultimate guide on what your result should look like as it depends on the task and the samples you’ve been given. That’s why it’s crucial to comprehend the nature of the subject first, and – most importantly – to have some practice in your college lab with your teacher.