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Nature Reviews Cancer 3, 869–876 (1 November 2003) | doi:10.1038/nrc1214

Analysing differential gene expression in cancer

Peng Liang & Arthur B. Pardee

Analysis of messenger RNA and proteins is widely used to compare patterns of gene expression between cells or tissues of different kinds and under different conditions; for example, between normal and cancer cells. The goal of the individuals who are developing these methods has been to enable faster, simpler, more sensitive and systematic analyses, and over the past few decades techniques have become increasingly more sophisticated. This timeline article reviews the evolution of these technologies as well as strategies for identifying differentially expressed genes in normal and cancer cells. It also highlights their use for the search for target genes of the tumour suppressor p53.