Pilot Projects | Project Supplements

Principal Investigators: Shripad Tuljapurkar, P. Rathod, and James R. Carey

This project's goal is to effectively characterize and measure the age-specific pattern of gene expression for a large array of genes in aging Medfly cohorts using microarrays. This project focuses on establishing "proof of principle" -extracting DNA, prepare a genome sequence library, PCR amplify inserts from several thousand clones using flanking primers, print these on glass slides, hybridize them with medfly RNA, validate transcriptional changes in Medfly organs, and reduce measurement noise by normalization of microarray slide signals using gene-specific blocking and pairwise comparisons between slides. The end result is that we will actually generate expression data at several age points in a cohort. We will also work on the analytical methods - how we can analyze the covariance patterns that we will find, and how to relate them to both theoretical predictions and to further analysis of important genes.