Analysis of the microbial gene landscape and transcriptome for aromatic pollutants and alkane degradation using a novel internally calibrated microarray system.

Despite various efforts to develop tools to detect and compare the catabolic potential and activity for pollutant degradation in environmental samples, there is still a need for an open-source, curated and reliable array method. We developed a custom array system including a novel normalization strategy that can be applied to any microarray design, allowing the calculation of the reliability of signals and make cross-experimental comparisons. Array probes, which are fully available to the scientific community, were designed from knowledge-based curated databases for key aromatic catabolic gene families and key alkane degradation genes.