An European eel-specific microarray platform was developed to identify genes involved in response to pollutants

An European eel-specific microarray platform was developed to identify genes involved in response to pollutants. A comparative analysis of gene expression was conducted between European eel Anguilla anguilla individuals from lowly-polluted Wijmeers pond at Uitbergen (Belgium), highly-polluted Hazewinkel pond at Willebroek (Belgium), extremely-polluted Dessel-Schotel canal at the locations of Schotel (Belgium) and low polluted Bolsena lake (Italy) environments. A comparative analysis of gene expression was conducted between European eel Anguilla anguilla individuals from lowly-polluted Wijmeers pond at Uitbergen (Belgium), highly-polluted Hazewinkel pond at Willebroek (Belgium), extremely-polluted Dessel-Schotel canal at the locations of Schotel (Belgium) and low polluted Bolsena lake (Italy) environments. Gene expression profiling was performed using an European eel-specific oligo-DNA microarray (GPL15124) of 14,913 probes based on single-colour detection (Cyanine-3 only). Microarrays were scanned with Agilent scanner G2565BA (barcode on the left, DNA on the back surface, scanned through the glass) at a resolution of 5 microns; all slides were scanned twice at two different sensitivity settings (XDRHi 100% and XDRLo 10%); the scanner software created a unique ID for each pair of XDR scans and saved it to both scan image files. Feature Extraction (FE) 9.5 used XDR ID to link the pairs of scans together automatically when extracting data. The signal left after all the FE processing steps have been completed is ProcessedSignal that contains the Multiplicatively Detrended, Background-Subtracted Signal.