MIAME

MIAME, or Minimum Information About a Microarray Experiment, is a community-developed standard for reporting microarray experiments to enable interpretation, independent verification, and data reuse. Proposed by the Microarray Gene Expression Data (MGED) Society in 2001, MIAME provides a checklist of information that should accompany microarray data so that others can understand the design, execution, and analysis of the study. The standard is intended to promote transparency and reproducibility across platforms and laboratories and is widely endorsed by journals and public repositories.

MIAME specifies six essential elements: experimental design, array design, samples, hybridizations, measurements, and data processing. Experimental design describes the factors being tested, controls, and replication strategy; array design details the microarray platform, sequences or features on the array; samples covers biological materials and labeling; hybridizations describe the conditions under which samples were applied to arrays; measurements include the raw and processed data values and their formats; data processing outlines normalization, summarization, and analysis steps. Providing these details allows others to reanalyze the data and compare results across studies.

MIAME's influence extends to data repositories and submission standards. Many public resources for gene expression data, such as GEO (Gene Expression Omnibus) and ArrayExpress, maintain MIAME-compliant submission requirements and may store data in formats compatible with MAGE-ML. While direct use of MAGE-ML has declined, the MIAME philosophy continues to underpin metadata practices for microarray experiments. Over time, MIAME has influenced broader minimum information guidelines for other high-throughput technologies and remains a reference point for reporting quality microarray data.