Sequences and clones for over a million expressed sequence tagged sites (ESTs) are currently publicly available. Only a minority of these identified clusters contains genes associated with a known functionality. One way of gaining insight into a gene's role in cellular activity is to study its expression pattern in a variety of circumstances and contexts, as it responds to its environment and to the action of other genes. Recent methods facilitate large-scale surveys of gene expression in which transcript levels can be determined for thousands of genes simultaneously. In particular, gene expression microarrays have become an essential tool in such studies. The two major technologies for expression microarrays are spotted arrays and oligonucleotide arrays. Spotted arrays make use of a complex biochemical-optical system to perform robotic spotting of cDNA probes that represent the genes. Oligonucleotide arrays, on the other hand, are based on a photolithographic process, not unlike the one used for making silicon chips for computers, which allow a very dense packing of the cDNA probes. In both cases, fluorescent-dyed RNA transcripts are hybridized to the arrays, and a imaging system is used to scan the hybridized arrays.

Since transcription control is accomplished by a method that interprets a variety of inputs, we require analytical tools for expression profile data that can detect the types of multivariate influences on decision-making produced by complex genetic networks. Put more generally, signals generated by the genome must be processed to characterize their regulatory effects and their relationship to changes at both the genotypic and phenotypic levels. Two salient goals of functional genomics are to screen for the key genes and gene combinations that explain specific cellular phenotypes (e.g. disease) on a mechanistic level, and to use genomic signals to classify disease on a molecular level.

Genomic Signal Processing (GSP) is the engineering discipline that studies the processing of genomic signals. Owing to the major role played in genomics by transcriptional signaling and the related pathway modeling, it is only natural that the theory of signal processing should be utilized in both structural and functional understanding. The aim of GSP is to integrate the theory and methods of signal processing with the global understanding of functional genomics, with special emphasis on genomic regulation. Hence, GSP encompasses various methodologies concerning expression profiles: detection, prediction, classification, control, and statistical and dynamical modeling of gene networks. GSP is a fundamental discipline that brings to genomics the structural model-based analysis and synthesis that form the basis of mathematically rigorous engineering.

Application is generally directed towards tissue classification and the discovery of signaling pathways, both based on the expressed macromolecule phenotype of the cell. Accomplishment of these aims requires a host of signal-processing approaches. These include signal representation relevant to transcription, such as wavelet decomposition and more general decompositions of stochastic time series, and system modeling using nonlinear dynamical systems. The kind of correlation-based analysis commonly used for understanding pair-wise relations between genes or cellular effects cannot capture the complex network of nonlinear information processing based upon multivariate inputs from inside and outside the genome. Regulatory models require the kind of nonlinear dynamics studied in signal processing and control, and in particular the use of stochastic dataflow networks common to distributed computer systems with stochastic inputs. This is not to say that existing model systems suffice. Genomics requires its own model systems, not simply straightforward adaptations of currently formulated models. New systems must capture the specific biological mechanisms of operation and distributed regulation at work within the genome. It is necessary to develop appropriate mathematical theory, including optimization for the kinds of external controls required for therapeutic intervention and approximation theory to arrive at nonlinear dynamical models that are sufficiently complex to adequately represent genomic regulation for diagnosis and therapy, and also not too complex for the amounts of data experimentally feasible or for the computational limits of existing computer hardware.