The Cooperative Research Program of the Toxicogenomics Research Consortium represents the coordinated, dependent research projects performed through the Toxicology Research Cores of each CRM, as well as interactions with the Resource Contractors. The Toxicogenomics Research Consortium has ongoing Standardization Experiments aimed at identifying and addressing sources of technical variation in gene expression experiments across multiple technology platforms and research centers.
The first standardization experiments utilized DNA microarrary technologies to identify sources of error and data variability between laboratories and across microarray platforms, and explored methods to accommodate this variability. Reproducibility between laboratories increased markedly when standardized protocols were implemented for RNA labeling, hybridization, microarray processing, data acquisition and data normalization, indicating that microarray results can be comparable across multiple laboratories, especially when a common platform and set of procedures are used.