Determining the number of individuals to pool

We compared 10, 20 and 40 animal pools to determine the best number of intact adults to pool Keywords: Agilent microarray, pooling, Drosophila, intact adults 16 vials of flies were reared. From each vial 5 individuals were selected. For the 10 animal comparison 4 vials were used with each replicate being a pool of 5 animals over 2 independent vials. For the 20 animal comparison 8 vials were used with each replicate being a pool of 5 animals over 5 independent vials and for the 40 animal comparison each replicate was a pool of 5 animals over 8 independent vials. There are two independent replicates of each type for 6 samples which were hybridized on three chips in a loop design.