Application of random matrix theory to microarray data for discovering functional gene modules.

We show that spectral fluctuation of coexpression correlation matrices of yeast gene microarray profiles follows the description of the Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) of the random matrix theory (RMT) and removal of small values of the correlation coefficients results in a transition from the GOE statistics to the Poisson statistics of the RMT. This transition is directly related to the structural change of the gene expression network from a global network to a network of isolated modules.