Bioinformatics: Microarrays Analyses and Beyond

We have witnessed in the past years the rapid progresses in the human genome project and biotechnologies. These advances result in many complex datasets associated with indepth scientific knowledge, e.g., genome sequences of many species, microarray expression profiles of different cell lines, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the human genome, etc. These data together with their underlying scientific challenges spawn the new field of Bioinformatics, which sprawls many academic disciplines as well as the pharmaceutical industry, and create one of the most exciting times for all quantitative researchers. There is no doubt that statistics will be pivotal in this new field, but it remains a challenge to us statisticians whether we can play a leading role in this biology and informatics revolution. This is not just a challenge, in fact, but also a golden opportunity for our discipline.