It was a timely review and a comparison of existing/new statistical methods on a hot topic that is of great interest to biologists, statisticians, and others.

It is mainly a review, although a new method (Mixture Model Method) was developed by myself and my colleagues and is described for the purpose of comparison.

It is of great interest to detect genes with differential expression in microarray experiments, but due to the high noise and the special feature of data (i.e., "a large number of genes, a small number of arrays"), it is necessary to apply a statistical method. However, a key question is, "Among many existing and new methods, which one should be used?" I reviewed and compared several important methods.

I became involved thanks to my collaborators, Dr. Chap Lin and Dr. Jizhen Lin, both at the University of Minnesota, who brought a microarray dataset to my attention and thus introduced me to the field.