Options available - from start to finish - for obtaining expression data by microarray

The excitement surrounding microarray technology has been tempered by the l imited ability of the general biomedical research community to gain access to it. Given that the hardware required for exploitation of the technology is becoming increasingly available, it is an appropriate moment to review o ptions, be they commercially or publically available. Here, we provide a sn apshot of the rapidly changing field of microarray-based RNA expression ana lysis and consider the components and procedures for putting together a com plete system.