MIAME

Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment

MIAME describes the Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment that is needed to enable the interpretation of the results of a microarray experiment unambiguously and potentially to reproduce the experiment. [Brazma et al. (2001), Nature Genetics]

The six most critical elements contributing towards MIAME are:

1. The raw data for each hybridisation (e.g., CEL or GPR files)

2. The final processed (normalised) data for the set of hybridisations in the experiment (study) (e.g., the gene expression data matrix used to draw the conclusions from the study)

3. The essential sample annotation including experimental factors and their values (e.g., compound and dose in a dose response experiment)

4. The experimental design including sample data relationships (e.g., which raw data file relates to which sample, which hybridisations are technical, which are biological replicates)

5. Sufficient annotation of the array (e.g., gene identifiers, genomic coordinates, probe oligonucleotide sequences or reference commercial array catalog number)

6. The essential laboratory and data processing protocols (e.g., what normalisation method has been used to obtain the final processed data)

Software tools and data exchange formats are available to help scientists produce MIAME-compliant descriptions of their experiments. See our MAGE-TAB and Annotare projects for details.