Identification of Stable Genes in Arabidopsis thaliana for expression analysis experiment Normalization: A Bioinformatic Pipeline

We have developed a bioinformatic pipeline to identify the most stable genes in a collection of curated transcriptomic experiments for the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The pipeline consists of two parts. The first part is a mathematical algorithm that filters numerical conditions that a proper reference gene should meet, such as minimal expression, variation, and replicability among experiments. The second part integrates a biological filter that uses reference gene-associated biological processes as landmarks to select potential genes, thus avoiding genes with uncharacterized functions and volatile expression patterns resulting from shifting biological processes.