In my lab we did a microarray to analyze differential gene expression in S. cerevisiae treated with UV irradiation. We are now analyzing the results and one of the up-regulated genes is labeled "Alien4_60." I believe this is some kind of control, but I am having trouble understanding what it is.
I would think that a probe labeled "alien" in a microarray would be some kind of negative control. The probe-list (excel file) says "Control stringency: 60% identity to oligo Alien4" as the description for this probe. What does this mean?
..As you can imagine, searches for "Alien4" only brings up sci-fi movies!
p.s. perhaps someone with enough rep could tag this question with more meaningful tags.