A Beginners Guide to Microarrays addresses two audiences - the core facility manager who produces, hybridizes, and scans arrays, and the basic research scientist who will be performing the analysis and interpreting the results. User friendly coverage and detailed protocols are provided for the technical steps and procedures involved in many facets of microarray technology, including: -Cleaning and coating glass slides, -Designing oligonucleotide probes, -Constructing arrays for the detection and quantification of different bacterial species, -Preparing spotting solutions, -Troubleshooting spotting problems, -Setting up and running a core facility, -Normalizing background signal and controlling for systematic variance, -Designing experiments for maximum effect, -Analyzing data with statistical procedures, -Clustering data with machine-learning protocols.