<p>In this thesis the effect of normalization methods on the identification of differentially expressed genes is investigated. A zebrafish microarray dataset called Swirl was used in this thesis work. First the Swirl dataset was extracted and visualized to view if the robust spline and print tip loess normalization methods are appropriate to normalize this dataset. The dataset was then normalized with the two normalization methods and the differentially expressed genes were identified with the LimmaGUI program. The results were then evaluated by investigating which genes overlap after applying different normalization methods and which ones are identified uniquely after applying the different methods. The results showed that after the normalization methods were applied the differentially expressed genes that were identified by the LimmaGUI program did differ to some extent but the difference was not considered to be major. Thus the main conclusion is that the choice of normalization method does not have a major effect on the resulting list of differentially expressed genes.</p>

In this thesis the effect of normalization methods on the identification of differentially expressed genes is investigated. A zebrafish microarray dataset called Swirl was used in this thesis work. First the Swirl dataset was extracted and visualized to view if the robust spline and print tip loess normalization methods are appropriate to normalize this dataset. The dataset was then normalized with the two normalization methods and the differentially expressed genes were identified with the LimmaGUI program. The results were then evaluated by investigating which genes overlap after applying different normalization methods and which ones are identified uniquely after applying the different methods. The results showed that after the normalization methods were applied the differentially expressed genes that were identified by the LimmaGUI program did differ to some extent but the difference was not considered to be major. Thus the main conclusion is that the choice of normalization method does not have a major effect on the resulting list of differentially expressed genes.