There is a need to better understand the relationship, if any, between mRNA expression data obtained using microarray anal. and protein expression data obtained using electrophoretic methods. While data on mRNA and protein expression profiles are important to develop an understanding of complex phenotypes, a math. framework is required to correlate these profiles in the absence of complete exptl. information. Such a framework may also provide key information on the regulation of gene expression at translation and permit more effective quantitation when comparing data from different phenotypes. We will describe a math. framework which considers multiple mRNA species, translation and the assocd. proteins. Using this framework, a statistical correlation can be established for the expected relationship between the mRNA expression and protein expression profiles. [on SciFinder (R)]