Metabolomics:Open Access

Transcriptional Profiling of Stress Response or Slow Growth?

Abstract

Zhang X and Liu J

Transcriptomic profiling analyses are frequently used for the study of cells in response to environmental stress factors that often impede cell optimal growth. Given that transcriptional profiles of optimally growing cells differ significantly from those of sub-optimally growing cells, stress-induced differentially-transcribed genes are thus inevitably mixed with slow growth genes. It is therefore necessary to separate the stress-specific response genes from slow growth genes. Methodologies used to deconvolute stress-specific response from non-specific response such as slow growth are discussed in this editorial.