Statistics for Biology and Health Series Editors W. Wong, M. Gail, K. Krickeberg, A. Tsiatis, J. Samet Robert Gentleman Vincent J. Carey Wolfgang Huber Rafael A. Irizarry Sandrine Dudoit Editors Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Solutions Using R and Bioconductor With 128 Illustrations Editors Robert Gentleman Program in Computational Biology Division of Public Health Sciences Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center 1100 Fairview Ave. N, M2-B876 PO Box 19024 Seattle, Washington 98109-1024 USA
[email protected] Wolfgang Huber European Bioinformatics Institute European Molecular Biology Laboratory Cambridge, CB10 1SD UK
[email protected] Series Editors Wing Wong Department of Statistics Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 USA A. Tsiatis Department of Statistics North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 27695 USA Vincent J. Carey Channing Laboratory Brigham and Women’s Hospital Harvard Medical School 181 Longwood Ave Boston MA 02115 USA
[email protected] Rafael A. Irizarry Department of Biostatistics Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health 615 North Wolfe Street Baltimore, MD 21205 USA
[email protected] Sandrine Dudoit Division of Biostatistics School of Public Health University of California, Berkeley 140 Earl Warren Hall, #7360 Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 USA
[email protected] M. Gail National Cancer Institute Rockville, MD 20892 USA K. Krickeberg Le Cha¨telet F-63270 Manglieu France J. Samet Department of Epidemiology School of Public Health Johns Hopkins University 615 Wolfe Street Baltimore, MD 21205 USA Library of Congress Control Number: 2005923843 ISBN-10: 0-387-25146-4 ISBN-13: 978-0387-25146-2 Printed on acid-free paper. © 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, Inc., 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed in China. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 springeronline.com (EVB) Preface During the past few years, there have been enormous advances in genomics and molecular biology, which carry the promise of understanding the functioning