A certain kind of scatter-plot commonly used for microarray analysis where the intensity measurements from microarrays are transformed in a special way. The. x-axis corresponds to the absolute intensity of the spot (A-value), the y-axis corresponds to a measure of differential expression (M-value).

A data format used to transfer microarray data to public repositories (e.g. ArrayExpress). The MAGE-TAB format consists mainly of spread sheets, which can be represented as tabulator- or comma-separated files.

Marker-Assisted Selection; Selection of a genetic determinant of a trait of interest (e.g. productivity, disease resistance and quality) through the use of a marker (morphological, biochemical or one based on DNA/RNA variation).

Position with identical bases or amino acids in a sequence alignment.

Paired reads of the two ends of a cloned DNA molecule. Mate-pairs are often used by genome assembly programs to orient and order contigs, taking into account the distance between the ends of the DNA molecule and the orientation relationship of the sequences.

Multiple displacement amplification. Isothermal DNA amplification method using random hexarners and the DNA polymerase of bacteriophage Ø29.

High throughput analysis of the metabolites present in a cell type, a tissue or an organism and the modifications to metaholite pools under different conditions.

Application of genomic analysis, particularly high-throughput sequencing to environmental samples such as uncultured microbial communities.

Global analysis, usually by sequencing, of the expressed genetic information (gene transcripts) produced by the collection of organisms in an ecosystem.

Major Histocompatibility Complex;  A large genornic region playing an important role in the immune system, autoimmunity and reproductive success.

Small DNA stretches of a repeated core sequence of few base pairs (e.g. GT repeat units) that are highly polymorphic, particularly in terms of the number of repeated units. These are mainly used to create genetic maps.

Minimal Infai-mation About a Microarray Experiment. MIAME is a recommendation that was established by a joint group of microarray experts (the Microarray and Gene Expression Data society or MGED) and describes the minimal requirements for data and information that a submission to a public microarray database should contain. The aim is to make microarray data understandable and reproducible.

Minimum Information about a Metagenome Sequence.

Position with different bases or amino acids in a sequence alignment.

Synthetic molecules of usually 25 bases in length that bind to com plementary sequences of RNA blocking the access of cell components to those sequences MorpholinOS can block translation, splicing miRNAs or their targets and ribozyme activity.

Massive Parallel Signature Sequencing Tool to analyse the level of expression of virtually all genes in a sample by counting the number of individual mRNA molecules produced from each gene.