
518 Statistics and Data Analysis for Microarrays Using R and Bioconductor
Intensities
cy3 cy5 Magnitude of
cy3/cy5 ratio
Biological meaning Interesting
gene
low low meaningless;
can be any-
thing
the gene is not expressed
in either condition
no
low high meaningless;
close to zero
gene expressed on cy5 , not
expressed on cy3
yes
high low meaningless ;
very large
gene expressed on cy3 , not
expressed on cy5
yes
high high meaningful;
can be any-
thing
gene expressed on both
channels, useful ratio
depe nds on
the ratio
TABLE 17.1: The meaning of the ratio cy3/cy5 depends in an essential
way on the absolute intensities cy3 and cy5. Furthermore, a gene may be
interesting from