Design of large time-course microarray experiments with two channels.

In this article we propose two practical types of designs for large time-course, dual-channel microarray experiments. One type consists of several interwoven loops, and the other type combines reference and loop designs. By representing the experiment as a graph, where the timepoints are nodes and the arrays are edges, we demonstrate how the time contrasts between any two timepoints can be estimated, provided that there is a path of edges linking them. In addition, we give a general formula for the variance of such contrasts. The efficiency of the proposed designs is evaluated by estimating the variances of the log-ratios of the comparisons of interest.