The Molecular Revolution in Cutaneous Biology: The Era of Global Transcriptional Analysis

Abstract

In the 3 decades since the discovery of the polymerase chain reaction, a progression of remarkable technical advances has driven great strides in our understanding of molecular biology such that now we are able to study at once the entire and complete set of RNA transcripts that are produced by the genome. In this review, we describe the milestones that have led to this era of global transcriptional analysis, how these approaches have been extended towards skin disease, and their future directions.