Using genomics to understand intestinal biology

The use of microarrays to evaluate the transcriptome has transformed our view of biology. In addition to the focused, hypothesis-testing studies that we have traditionally conducted in cell biology, we are now able to see global changes within the entire system of the cell in response to a treatment. By examining a biological question under multiple complementary perturbations model systems (e.g. yeast, C. Elegans) have revealed new complexity that would have been impossible to see on a gene-by-gene approach. Unfortunately, beyond the use of transcript profiles to define the molecular signature of diseases (e.g. cancer), transcriptomics has not been extensively used to study intestinal biology. This review will provide a roadmap for effective use of gene expression profiling for biological research and will review some of the microarray work that has been done to better understand the nature of intestinal development and enterocyte differentiation.