A scheme for the analysis of microarray measurements based on a quantitative theoretical framework for bacterial cell...

A theoretical framework was established for the interpretation of microarray measurements. Mathematical equations were derived that link the molecular processes involved in the transcription and translation of an open reading frame (ORF) with the properties of a population of cells. The theory was applied to three published sets of microarray measurements related to the growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It was shown for strains growing at the same rate, for example wild-type and mutant strains, that the expression ratio obtained by microarray analysis for a particular ORF is equal to the ratio of the copy numbers of the encoded protein. The growth of M. tuberculosis in a batch culture was analysed at several time points over a period of 60 days. Several properties including the following were calculated for cells cultured for 60 days: mu