Why are some gene symbols repeated for gene expression data?
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10.3 years ago
chengzhao41 ▴ 110

I'm working with gene expression data, and one thing that I notice is that some of the genes are repeated. For example, GSE12051 has the gene "ABL1" twice.

Why is this? If I wanted to know the gene expression of "ABL1" should I be taking the arithmetic mean of the two measurements?

gene-expression • 1.8k views
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This is a microarray data. In microarray, a gene can be represented by more than one probe/probeset. As a result, you see different expression values corresponding to different probes. You will have to be careful as different probes can represent different transcripts/isoforms or same transcripts.

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10.3 years ago

As Ashutosh mentioned, there can be multiple probesets for the same gene (probably designed to target different isoforms).

Unless they are technical replicates on a custom cDNA array, I wouldn't normally try to combine different probesets. I would typically consider differential expression of a single probe sufficient to define the gene as differentially expressed (and focus validation on region targeted by that probeset, if different probesets provide very different results).

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