Figure 2

Smart pooling process. Schematic showing the pooling process and the utility of a sparse expression profile. The right column shows a gene's expression across 15 samples, with only 1 spike (highlighted dark square). Samples are mixed according to the pooling design in the middle. The columns of the pooling design represent the samples being pooled and the rows represent the microarray chips used to test them. A black square in the pooling design represents the presence of the sample (along that column) on the corresponding chip (along that row). The highlighted column in the pooling design shows the sample that corresponds to the spike. The left column shows the resulting measurements that contain only two significant values (dark squares), those coming from the sample with the spike.