Microarray Time Course Data Analysis Issue

Question

[datanerd]

Hi all, Recently I have started working with microarray time course data. I came across packages to find differentially expressed genes or find periodic genes. But before I do this I wanted a quick look at the summary (graph) of a particular gene. I have 17 selected time points for 4 days. I want to visualize this 4 day data in24 hour time frame, to visulaize its average pattern over 24 hours.Do I just take the average and plot over 24 hours? Or is it much complicated than that? Will appreciate any suggestions. Thanks!

[seidel]

Do you mean to say that you have 17 observations over a 4 day time period, and you'd like to look at some kind of 24 hr average per day? i.e. reduce them to 4 by some kind of averaging? Or perhaps look at a moving average with a window size of 24 hrs? It's not clear to me how your data are spaced, or what question you are really trying to answer.

Answer 1

[datanerd]

Hi sorry for not being clear. Yes, the data is taken over 4 days and the first day time periods are matched for the next 3 days i.e( day one- 1hr, 2hr, 6hr,12hr,24hr, day 2- 25 hr, 26 hr, 30hr, 36hr, 48hr and similarly for the next. 2 days too. I want to condense this 4 day data over 24 hours ie want to observe 4 cycles into an average pattern for 24 hours. Not sure if averaging every point and then plotting is the rIght way? Or there's some other way to do it. Basically I want to see the ONE 24 hour pattern by using four 24 hour cycles.
I hope it's clear.

[Steve Lianoglou]

FYI: You shouldn't add this point of clarification as an answer to your question, but rather go back and edit your question to make it clearer.

[datanerd]

thanks. I know now.