
Chapter 22
The Gene Ont o logy (GO)
The whole is simpler than the sum of its parts.
—Willard Gibbs
22.1 Introduction
This text has focused so far on the numerical analysis of the microarray data
and the nitty-gritty of the number crunching. However, the ultimate purpose
of the gene expression experiments is to produce biological knowledge, not
numbers.
1
Independently of the methods used, the result of a microarray ex-
periment is, in most cases, a set of genes found to be differentially expressed
between two or more conditions under study. T he challenge faced by the re-
searcher is to translate this list of differentially regulated genes into a be tter