Tech Notes

Q. What is the difference between a genome and a gene list?

A. A genome is a list of all the genes printed on the array. It contains the annotations for all the genes, such as description, gene product, or locus. You can update the annotations by using the tool GeneSpider, providing that you have at least GenBank accession numbers for some or all the genes. The genome is represented by the "All Genes" list in the gene list folder.

A gene list contains only a subset of genes (i.e. a list of gene names with no annotations) that match the gene names in the genome. A gene list can be created using various methods, such as filtering, hand-selection, importing, or with the Gene List Editor. See the following note on how to import a gene list for more details.

To see what genes a gene list contains, double click on a gene list in the navigator. Depending on how a gene list is created, it may contain associated values, as reported on the second column of the Gene Inspector window. For example, if Filter on Fold Change Tool is used to create a gene list, the Gene List Inspector will report fold change values. You can also configure columns to display annotations associated with the genes on the list.