Large-scale analysis of Arabidopsis transcription reveals a basal co-regulation network

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Analyses of gene expression data from microarray experiments has become a central tool for identifying co-regulated, functional gene modules. A crucial aspect of such analysis is the integration of data from different experiments and different laboratories. How to weigh the contribution of different experiments is an important point influencing the final outcomes. We have developed a novel method for this integration, and applied it to genome-wide data from multiple Arabidopsis microarray experiments performed under a variety of experimental conditions. The goal of this study is to identify functional globally co-regulated gene modules in the Arabidopsis genome.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Following the analysis of 21,000 Arabidopsis genes in 43 datasets and about 2 × 10⁸gene pairs, we identified a globally co-expressed gene network. We found clusters of globally co-expressed Arabidopsis genes that are enriched for known Gene Ontology annotations. Two types of modules were identified in the regulatory network that differed in their sensitivity to the node-scoring parameter; we further showed these two pertain to general and specialized modules. Some of these modules were further investigated using the <it>Genevestigator </it>compendium of microarray experiments. Analyses of smaller subsets of data lead to the identification of condition-specific modules.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our method for identification of gene clusters allows the integration of diverse microarray experiments from many sources. The analysis reveals that part of the <it>Arabidopsis </it>transcriptome is globally co-expressed, and can be further divided into known as well as novel functional gene modules. Our methodology is general enough to apply to any set of microarray experiments, using any scoring function.</p

A wide lens on learning in a networked society: What can we learn by synthesizing multiple research perspectives?

Learning in a networked society is presented in this symposium with the basic assumption that “schooling” and “society” cannot be considered as separate entities and should bring together the theoretical and practical tools of scientists in both the social and educational sciences. Despite the powerful potential for cross-fostering of ideas between these fields, one key question arising inquires whether educational scientists—who focus on the interventionist, design-based study of learning—and social scientists, who concentrate on analytic study of spontaneous social interaction and knowledge construction, can engage in a productive collaboration. This symposium seeks to address this question by adopting an interdisciplinary lens, through which these perspectives have been integrated, or at least juxtaposed, to develop new insights regarding what it means to learn in an information-based networked society. Six interdisciplinary research projects that represent lessons learned from synergistic projects among researchers from these fields are presented in this symposium