Abstract
Microarray-based transcriptome profiling is arguably the most mature and widely practiced omics technology of the post-genomics era. It provides an intuitive measure of transcript abundance for comparative gene expression analysis and for construction of co-regulation networks. Whole-genome microarray analysis can also facilitate systems-level analysis and integration of data from other omics platforms that lack global coverage, such as proteome and metabolome analyses. Just as Populus expressed sequence tag collections have proven invaluable for gene discovery and functional characterization, the growing volume of whole-genome microarray data represents a rich resource that promises to support a wide range of scientific inquiries to advance Populus biology in years to come.
