Abstract Summary: Oligonucleotide microarray probes are designed to match specific transcripts present in databases that are regularly updated. As a consequence probes should be checked every new database release. We thus developed an informatics tool allowing the semi-automatic update of probe collections of long oligonucleotides and applied it to the mouse RefSeq database. Availability: http://www.bio.espci.fr/sol/ Contact: [email protected] Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at http://www.bio.espci.fr/sol/

UNLABELLED: Here, we describe a tool for VARiability Analysis of DNA microarrays experiments (VARAN), a freely available Web server that performs a signal intensity based analysis of the log2 expression ratio variability deduced from DNA microarray data (one or two channels). Two modules are proposed: VARAN generator to compute a sliding windows analysis of the experimental variability (mean and SD) and VARAN analyzer to compare experimental data with an asymptotic variability model previously built with the generator module from control experiments. Both modules provide normalized intensity signals with five possible methods, log ratio values and a list of genes showing significant variations between conditions. AVAILABILITY: http://www.bionet.espci.fr/varan/ SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: http://www.bionet.espci.fr/varan/help.html