Use of microarray analysis to investigate EMT gene signatures

The epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a widely studied program of development of cells characterized by loss of cell adhesion, repression of E-cadherin expression, and increased cell mobility. Microarrays have become a well-established technique for simultaneously measuring the expression of thousands of transcripts encoded by the genome. In this chapter, we demonstrate how microarray analysis can be used to assess the role of EMT-genes associated with a collagen invading phenotype by generating a gene expression signature and relating this to cell line and tumor datasets from published microarray studies.